


lessons exquisitely crafted

by kaydeefalls



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, as per canon, discussions about faith, working through your own shit before you can start a healthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28515633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaydeefalls/pseuds/kaydeefalls
Summary: "Do you think we'll dream of each other, now?" Nicolò asks unexpectedly. "Like we do those two women?"It startles a real laugh out of Yusuf. "Who knows? Sometimes, Nicolò, I think I must have dreamedyouentirely."After escaping the fall of Jerusalem together, Yusuf walks away from Nicolò in order to return home and move on with his life. It works for a while. Fifteen years later, Nicolò shows up in his dreams of the two immortal women.(In which Yusuf needs time to come to terms with destiny, and Nicolò to make peace with himself, before they can meet on equal ground.)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 301
Kudos: 723
Collections: The Old Guard Mini Bang 2020





	1. I measure the time and I stand amazed

**Author's Note:**

> Amazing art by [prose-n-scripts](https://prose-n-scripts.tumblr.com/), which can be found [here](https://prose-n-scripts.tumblr.com/post/639255898170261504/do-you-think-well-dream-of-each-other-now)! Thanks to **supersonicsidekick** for the beta.
> 
> Title and headers courtesy of "Eric's Song" by Vienna Teng.

When Yusuf turns up on his sister's doorstep almost a year after the fall of Jerusalem, she screams, slaps him across the face hard enough to bruise, and then bursts into tears.

Maryam has always been his favorite sibling, and not just because of her mean right hook.

Once recovered from the initial shock, she sits him down in the kitchen with hot tea and a plate of makroudh on the table between them. "But how is this possible?" she asks, scrubbing impatiently at her damp cheeks. "We heard it was a massacre."

Yusuf's throat tightens. He keeps his gaze fixed on her beloved face and his breathing steady. He is home now, in Mahdia, half a continent away from that horror, and they are safe. The screams echo only within his own mind. "It was," he rasps out. "Maryam, I…"

"Never mind," she says fiercely. She grips his hands between hers. "You're here, you're _home_ , thanks be to God. It doesn't matter how. Why you ever chose to fight for the Fatimids in the first place—"

"It wasn't for them, it was for the city." He squeezes her hands. "For the people who lived there. I couldn't just turn my back on them, not when I thought I could help."

Maryam huffs out a watery laugh. "No, of course not. I just wish you would hold your own life half so dearly, little brother."

_If only you knew,_ he does not say, and swallows down hysterical laughter of his own.

They're interrupted then by Maryam's husband and children returning from whatever they were out doing, and thus follows another round of exclamations and explanations and hugs and kisses. Yusuf soaks it all in, basks in the effortless familial affection, feels the parched and withered seedling that his heart had become slowly unfurl behind his ribcage. Perhaps the past two years of war and deprivation had never happened at all. Perhaps he can close that door firmly behind him and move onward.

"How did you escape the Frankish armies?" his nephew Ibrahim demands, eyes alight, eager for tales of heroism as so many boys his age are. He's grown two handspans since Yusuf last saw him. "Were you all alone?"

Yusuf blinks, seeing a flash of pale eyes, the quirk of a smile tucked into the corners of generous lips, hot sunlight glinting off the blade of a sword.

"No," he murmurs. "I was not alone."

* * *

At first, he takes comfort in how easily he slots back into his old life. Theirs is a prosperous merchant family, and Yusuf is the youngest of four siblings. The eldest, Ahmed, took over the business when their father passed several years ago, and their middle brother, Tawfiq, is more than happy to turn management of the accounts back over to Yusuf (though in reality, it's been Maryam handling them in his stead; Tawfiq has no head for numbers).

"You're the scholar among us, anyway, eh?" Tawfiq says, clapping Yusuf too hard on the shoulder. "Put your pretty calligraphy to use."

Not that his brothers weren't educated—Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani would never permit a child of his to remain ignorant—but their interests lie in other areas. Tawfiq is a natural-born sailor, and Ahmed has charm in excess to sweet-talk potential trading partners (and women who are not his wife). They are away on business more often than home in Mahdia, which suits all parties quite well, likely including their wives. Not that Yusuf doesn't love his brothers, but they're more than a decade his senior, and though he possesses some of Ahmed's charisma and Tawfiq's easy physicality, he's always been closest to Maryam in both age and disposition. And she's always taken an oddly maternal attitude toward him, despite only being five years older, due to the fact that their own mother had died when they were quite young.

She insists he take up residence in her home, as he had often before, and in exchange he acts as tutor to her children, filling in any perceived gaps in the education provided by their local madrassa. His niece Sarra loves to draw, so he teaches her to use charcoal and inks, paints and clay. His nephew yearns to be a great swordsman, so Yusuf spars with him using wooden staffs in the courtyard. Once, young Ibrahim manages to land a sharp blow to his stomach that leaves Yusuf sprawled on the ground wheezing, and both children shriek and push up the folds of his tunic to see how bad the bruise is.

It yellows and fades away to nothing as they stare. Fortunately, they're young enough to believe him when he tells them it was never a bruise at all, hardly even a hit. After that, though, Yusuf is far more cautious when it comes to their physical education.

In the evenings, before the children go to bed, Yusuf and Maryam take turns telling them fantastical stories, tales of heroes and villains and magic. Maryam has always been the true storyteller in their family; Yusuf does better in a supporting role, or bringing the images she describes to life with his sketches. They ask him for tales of his own adventures, sailing the Mediterranean on behalf of his brothers, and he obliges when he can. He won't speak of Jerusalem, though, or his journey home, so they soon stop asking. Although Maryam eyes him sidelong, she refrains from commenting.

"You're so good with them," she remarks once. The children have been put to bed and her husband has excused himself to his study to finish up his own day's business before Isha; it's just the two of them together in the courtyard, lamps glittering around them in the warm night air. "Did you never want a family of your own?"

He grins, putting some finishing touches on his illustration of tonight's story, a djinn with magic sparkling between its palms. "Between your brood and our brothers', haven't I family enough already?"

"I'm serious, Yusuf. I can think of several young women who would be very happy with a husband like you."

She reaches out to scrub charcoal dust off his cheek, ever the mother, and he laughs. "What does that mean, a husband like me? An artist?" he teases.

Maryam lifts an eyebrow. "Yes," she says meaningfully. "Just so."

His breath catches a little in his throat. This is not a thing they discuss openly, though he knows his preferences are no secret to anyone in his family. His brothers tend to regard it as the romanticism of youth, and suppose he'll settle down as most men do eventually; they don't particularly care one way or the other. He's the baby of the family. He's not required to produce heirs. As for Maryam… well, she had a bosom companion of her own in her youth, but she seems quite content with her husband and children now, so they've never spoken of it.

They have always been the closest in both age and disposition, Maryam and Yusuf.

"I don't think so, Maryam," he tells her quietly. Despite what she may think, this has nothing to do with his choice of bedmates. How can he even begin to explain? How could he take a wife without telling her about the secret that runs through his blood? Would any children he sired share it? Can his curse of immortality be passed along in that way? Or, far worse, would he have to watch them wither and die?

She regards him thoughtfully for a long time. "All right," she finally says. "But I do not like to think of you always alone, little brother."

He plasters on a grin. "When am I ever alone, with such a loving sister?"

Maryam cups his cheek in her palm and gives him a rueful smile. "May it ever be so, _inshallah_."

That night he dreams of the two dark-haired foreign women again, as he often has since his first death outside the walls of Jerusalem. They ride together across an endless grassy plain, and his heart aches to see the way they smile at each other, the open affection in every glance, every touch. He does not like to think of himself always alone, either.

* * *

The trouble is, of course, that he so seamlessly slipped back into this life because he has always been somewhat superfluous to it. Not in Maryam's eyes, of course; she loves him as dearly as he does her. But he's the baby brother, the layabout, the dreamer. He had gone away as a young man to study in Fustat for several years, living dissolutely as any student; returned to Mahdia rarely for more than a season or two at a stretch before accompanying one of their family's merchant ships on business to Tripoli, or Mdina, or Alexandria. The whole reason he'd ended up in Jerusalem in the first place was to assess its economy under its new rulers, the Fatimids having taken the city only a year prior to the Frankish invasion.

This is the longest he's remained in his hometown since he was about eighteen years old. It begins to chafe. His nephew is now old enough to need no tutoring, and may well outstrip Yusuf in height soon; Maryam's friends become increasingly vocal about wanting to find Yusuf a wife, despite her best efforts to quell them, and keep shoving daughters and nieces in his general direction.

When Ahmed asks him to oversee an expedition to Valletta, Yusuf jumps at the opportunity. The sea doesn't run in his blood like a natural sailor's, but he has always enjoyed the constant motion of it, the _freedom_. Though he loves his home, his dreams have always been filled with a much wider world than can be found in Mahdia. And that was true long before he died upon an infidel's blade and began dreaming of two women in foreign lands.

When their ship runs afoul of some lackluster pirates on their way back from Malta, he unsheathes his saif with a purpose for the first time in many years, and it sings through the air. He hadn't realized that he missed this. It's not the violence he enjoys; just the sheer physicality of it, the confidence in his abilities, the knowledge that none can touch him.

(If there's an empty space at his back, if he keeps glancing to one side in search of an absent brother-in-arms—well, who would even notice?)

No one sees the deep gash he takes to the thigh, or how quickly it seals itself up again. Well, none but the man who gave it to him, but he won't be telling any tales.

The crew vocally admires his fortitude and clearheadedness in battle, and the ship's captain sings his praises to Ahmed when they return to Mahdia. Ahmed seems surprised to hear it.

"How did you _think_ I survived Jerusalem?" Yusuf demands, laughing.

Ahmed looks him over consideringly, somewhat of their sister's shrewdness lingering in his gaze. "I suppose I never gave it much thought."

After that, he doesn't spend quite so much time at home with Maryam.

* * *

In every new port, he finds himself craning his neck, searching through the crowds for a certain shaggy head, for a particular pair of luminous eyes. Every glimpse of pale skin out of the corner of his eye makes him turn to look, just in case. But he is nowhere to be found.

_Good_ , Yusuf tells himself firmly, and very nearly believes it.

* * *

His niece Sarra announces her first pregnancy, smiling so wide as to nearly split her face, and Maryam plans a marvelous feast to celebrate. Yusuf just got back in last week (from Tunis, this time, a much briefer jaunt), so of course he is commandeered to assist with the preparations. He enjoys haggling, and Maryam's joints have been aching lately in ways that make it difficult for her to carry heavy loads, so he accompanies her to the marketplace to pick up some last minute delicacies.

She's finishing up a transaction with a silk merchant when he rejoins her, shouldering several bags of his own. The merchant smiles at him approvingly. "What an attentive son you have!" she tells Maryam with a smile. "He must be a comfort to you."

Maryam and Yusuf exchange glances, horror mingled with amusement, before Maryam stifles a laugh and turns back to the merchant. "Oh, no, he's my brother."

"Her _much younger_ brother," Yusuf teases, chuckling as she swats at him. The merchant laughs as well, apologizing for her mistake, and they conclude their business pleasantly.

Back at home, though, once they've unloaded their purchases, Maryam pulls him out of the bustling kitchen, away from the servants and friends all helping to prepare the feast. She just looks at him for long minutes, hands pressed to her hips. He returns her gaze, eyebrow lifted.

"Yusuf," she says slowly. "How long has it been since you returned from Jerusalem? Ten years?"

"Closer to fifteen, I think—Sarra was barely nine years old then. Why?"

She reaches up to trace the fine crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, trails her fingertips through his dark beard. "You do not look like a man nearing his fiftieth year, little brother. Ahmed and Tawfiq certainly have not aged so well."

Something cold and sharp trips down his spine. He ignores it as best he can. "Perhaps my happy outlook on life improves my complexion."

"Perhaps," she echoes, but her eyes are worried. Her hair is thickly threaded with silver these days; she's about to become a grandmother. And Yusuf is not so very much younger than her.

He studies his own face in a mirror that night, not a vanity he generally indulges in. Would he even notice subtle changes in his own appearance, over time? But she's right. His hair is still thick and dark, his skin does not sag, he hasn't grown a paunch over his belly like his brothers, his face has no more wrinkles in it than it did in Jerusalem.

He looks very much the same as he did the day he first died. _Exactly_ the same.

This, somehow, had not occurred to him before.

* * *

Not long later, Yusuf dreams of a city, naggingly familiar in the curves of its archways, the intricate brickwork of its walls. The women are there, of course; it's one of _those_ dreams. They've been coming more frequently of late. He wonders if it means anything.

There's a marketplace, loud and clamorous, and oppressive heat. People are shouting and pushing at one another. Despite the bright sunlight, the air feels thick and ominous as though with an approaching storm.

The taller woman, the one with eyes pale as ice, already holds her strangely shaped axe in both hands like a warning. The other moves in her wake, tugging at sleeves and whispering urgently in ears. If she hopes to diffuse the tension, it isn't working.

From the vantage point of his dream, Yusuf has no way of seeing precisely where or how the riot begins. Perhaps the women can't see it either. Or perhaps it's simply the nature of dreaming, leaping from one image to the next without lingering over the connective tissue. One moment it is still merely a crowd in a market. The next, an angry mob. The axe flashes like heat lightning through the hot air. Someone screams; many voices join in. There are no soldiers yet, but apart from that, it feels rather like the day Jerusalem fell.

Well. Not quite so bloody.

The women fight to subdue, not to kill; they do their best to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The tall one lowers her axe for long enough to catch hold of a child's arm, pulling the boy behind her until she can guide him to an alleyway to flee. The dark-eyed woman grimly slashes them a path with her own curved blade.

Now soldiers arrive, though their presence only fans the flames higher. They strike out at anyone standing in their way. One kicks an older woman, who falls and is nearly trampled before Yusuf's dream-women rush in to assist her.

The women are separated in the mob; the dream flashes back and forth between them rapidly, dizzyingly. The tall one grapples with a knot of three soldiers, while a fourth's sword slashes down toward the back of her neck—

(The part of Yusuf that is aware of himself, that is lucid, braces cringingly for the cut of steel—)

—but is intercepted and flung aside by a long, straight blade. A new man steps into the fight, only glimpsed out of the corner of the eye; the tall woman's battle stance shifts instinctively to incorporate this unlikely partner, and they fight back to back until the tide of the riot shifts, leaves them with an unexpected breath of air.

When she turns to thank him, she looks up into wide, sea-glass eyes, set deeply in a face as pale as her own, and she blinks in sudden recognition.

Yusuf gasps himself awake from the sheer shock of it, with Nicolò's name warm and heavy on his lips.


	2. strange how we know each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: non-explicit discussions of trauma and racism, because Crusades.

Here's the thing: to be the only man left standing in a field of corpses does not feel like a victory. To gasp awake, alone, when no one else does—this is not a thing to be celebrated. It scrapes away at your insides, hollows you out, leaves you a husk of a person. For Yusuf, who has lived thirty-three years in the near-constant company of others, surrounded by family and friends and colleagues and even indifferent acquaintances, it is an intensely _isolating_ experience.

So outside the broken walls of Jerusalem, fleeing the massacre he was unable to prevent, when he stumbles across the man who killed him three, four, five times in the past weeks—the man he killed in retribution five or seven times himself, and yet continued to rise—

When this equally invincible invader with huge, haunted, corpse-pale eyes holds up empty hands in a gesture of peace, his battered sword dropping to the dirt at his feet, Yusuf does not kill him for a sixth (eighth? tenth?) time. He just nods curtly and permits him to follow.

Yusuf is simply tired of feeling so very alone.

* * *

"Nicolò," the other man says, after two long days and nights without a word spoken between them. He places a hand on his own chest in a sign that needs no further translation and repeats it. "Nicolò di Genova."

Yusuf grunts in acknowledgement but feels no particular compunction to return the gesture. He takes a petty satisfaction in his own silence. It does not come naturally to him, but he persists. Their current truce notwithstanding, this murderer has not earned the right to his name.

Irritatingly, Nicolò does not seem at all discomfited by his reticence. He often appears too lost in his own thoughts to particularly concern himself with Yusuf's. But sometimes, as they make their cautious way across the barren landscape, Yusuf can _feel_ those unsettlingly wide eyes watching him, sidelong looks from beneath his shaggy mane of dirt-brown hair. There's something disquieting in his gaze. Yusuf finds himself returning it more often than not, sneaking surreptitious glances of his own. Why _him_ , he wonders. Why do they share this uncanny curse of immortality?

He very nearly abandons Nicolò in the night, once. He jolts awake from a strangely vivid dream of two dark-haired women fighting side by side. They move like poetry, like an answered prayer; their blades seem to sing through the air, hewing down enemies as though threshing wheat. It is not the first time he's dreamed of them (they've populated his dreams with curious frequency ever since Jerusalem), but it is the most lucid so far. Theirs is an endless dance, and although the beauty of it brings tears to his eyes, it also feels somehow damning. These perennial warriors, cursed to an eternity of battle—is this to be his destiny as well? Are he and Nicolò doomed to the same Jahannam of violent deaths and rebirths, shackled together until Yusuf loses all sense of his own self separate from their shared fate?

A wild terror claws at his chest, urges him to run hard and fast, and never look back. To break _free_ of whatever twisted fate seems to bind them.

Of course, that's the night they're set upon by bandits—likely deserters from the Fatimid army, just as desperate as they themselves are—and so instead of fleeing from Nicolò, Yusuf unexpectedly finds himself fighting back to back with him, grimly defending their tiny campfire and meager bundle of provisions. It's disconcerting how easily they fall into a rhythm together, each already familiar enough with the other's fighting style to instinctively complement it. They dispatch all three bandits far too easily for two exhausted, underfed ex-soldiers. Apart from a gash to his arm that heals within minutes, Yusuf doesn't even need to rely on his newfound immortality to win the fight.

After, they stare at each other for long moments, breathing hard. Nicolò has a splash of blood across his face that might or might not be his own. His pale eyes gleam in the moonlight; Yusuf remembers wondering, when they were still set on killing each other, if Nicolò's first death had leached all the warmth and color from them. He looks Yusuf up and down, visibly relaxing to find him unhurt. It's curiously disarming.

Yusuf nods at him, then cleans his blade on the tunic of one of the fallen bandits. Eventually Nicolò follows suit. Without a word or gesture exchanged between them, they begin efficiently checking the bodies for anything of value and then packing up their little campsite, unwilling to linger in this place of death.

The night is clear and cool. They walk onward. When they crest a hill and leave the dead bandits firmly behind them, Yusuf pauses, shifting his pack from one shoulder to the other. Nicolò stops as well, eying him uncertainly.

"Yusuf," Yusuf finally says, tapping his own chest once, twice. "Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani."

The barest hint of a smile flickers in the corners of Nicolò's mouth. Perhaps it's only a trick of the moonlight. "Yusuf," he repeats.

They resume walking.

* * *

The following day they skirt around a village, and through an elaborate series of hand gestures Yusuf manages to communicate that Nicolò should remain out of sight while Yusuf replenishes their provisions. They'd picked up spare weapons from the dead bandits that aren't worth carrying, and Yusuf is able to barter them for clothing that isn't bloodstained and a couple of waterskins, as well as some dried meat and fruit.

Nicolò nods approval when he sees their new bounty. Once the village is well behind them, he clears his throat, eyeing Yusuf hesitantly, then asks...something. It's the first full sentence Yusuf has heard him utter since they embarked upon this tentative truce. It's also, of course, completely incomprehensible to him, though the general flow of the words seems passingly familiar. Nicolò tries again, speaking more slowly and clearly, but doesn't look surprised when Yusuf can only shake his head. He nods to himself, mouth twisting, and shrugs as if to say _I expected as much, but it was worth a try._

Well, if Nicolò was willing to make the effort, Yusuf supposes it would be churlish of him not to respond in kind. "I don't suppose there's any chance of you speaking Arabic," he remarks, in the dialect most commonly spoken in the Levant and thus the most likely for a recent invader like Nicolò to have encountered. But these Franks seem to take an ugly sort of pride in their own ignorance, so he doubts any of it would have sunk in. Sure enough, Nicolò just shrugs again. "None of the local dialects?" Yusuf tries, switching between a few different ones as he speaks, careful to enunciate clearly. "How about derja—though I can't imagine an idiot soldier like yourself to be particularly well-traveled. Do you possess no curiosity at all about the people who _live_ in the lands you assholes are invading?"

Nicolò must comprehend the exasperation in his tone, at least, because he has the grace to look abashed by the end of it. He tries responding in a different tongue, at length, and this time Yusuf does recognize a word or two.

"Latin, yes?" he replies in that language.

Nicolò's eyes brighten, and he rattles something off too quickly for Yusuf to follow.

"No good, me," Yusuf sighs. He's encountered Latin almost exclusively in written texts, and only rarely heard it spoken aloud. Terrible, dry language. Ugly alphabet.

Still, buoyed by that success, slim though it was, Nicolò tries some Greek, and that turns out to be common ground between them. They don't speak quite the same dialect of it—Nicolò's is a sort of bastardized pidgin that borrows words from Latin and a few other nearby tongues, while Yusuf speaks a more scholarly version—but at least they can make themselves understood.

"Where are we going?" Nicolò finally asks. And it's a wonder, really, that he's made no attempt to figure this out before; that he had thus far blindly placed his trust in the hands of an enemy, without question or hesitation.

Unfortunately, it also happens to be a question to which Yusuf has no real answer. "Away," he mutters. "Just...away."

He sneaks a glance over at Nicolò. Those disconcertingly large eyes seem shadowed, somehow, even in the bright sunlight. "All right," Nicolò agrees quietly, and does not ask again.

* * *

They're heading roughly southwest, through a rocky landscape dotted with scrubby trees and the occasional trickle of a river. Soon enough, Yusuf knows, the terrain will dry out into desert. He's not terribly familiar with the overland routes between Jerusalem and Egypt, but he doesn't trust the Levantine coast right now. Too many of these Frankish invaders came by sea, and he doesn't want to run smack into the Fatimid army attempting to retake the city, either. He will need to board a ship eventually if he wants to get home, but not so close to the war zone these lands have become.

They can't just wander through the wilderness forever. He does in fact need a plan.

"Fustat," he finally tells Nicolò, watching the sun sink down below the treeline. They managed to follow the narrow river to a point deep enough to bathe in, and decided to stop here for the night. Yusuf feels infinitely better for having scrubbed off weeks' worth of blood and dirt. The water feels like it cleared his head as well. "If we can make it across the desert to Fustat, I have friends there. I can get money, arrange for transport to Alexandria, and from there we can barter passage onto a boat going...anywhere, really."

Nicolò's hair is still wet. He pushes it back out of his face with a frown. "That makes sense. But I have never crossed a desert before."

"I have," Yusuf says, with a confidence that is entirely unearned. He _has_ , just not this particular one, and only ever as part of a much larger caravan. But this is nowhere near so vast or dangerous as the Sahara, and he's traded with the Bedouins before. They'll be fine. What's the worst that can happen, anyway? If they die, they'll just come back.

As the sun fully sets, Yusuf kneels for the Salat al-Maghrib, while Nicolò gathers branches from the gnarled little trees to start a small fire. In a climate this dry, the temperature drops rapidly at night. He's clearly learned that much, at least. After completing his prayers, Yusuf rejoins him to watch in silence. Finally, he asks, "Where is home, for you?"

"Genova, I suppose." Nicolò looks up at him across the little fire, and Yusuf is struck anew by the ghostly paleness of his Byzantine eyes. They're practically colorless, like water, reflecting whatever's in front of them. Now they seem to glow in the firelight. "And you? Was…was Jerusalem your home?"

His shoulders hunch forward as he asks it, as through bracing for a blow. But he keeps his level gaze on Yusuf's. Well, whatever else might be said of Nicolò di Genova, Yusuf has never accused him of being a coward.

"No, my family lives in Mahdia." Yusuf pokes a branch at the fire, just to give his hands something to do. "I was only in Jerusalem for business, if you can believe that."

"Business?" Nicolò repeats, frowning. "You are not a soldier?"

Yusuf lifts an eyebrow. "Not until your people forced me to become one, no. Starting with your fellow Genovese attacking my home city when I was a much younger man."

"Ah." A faint flush colors Nicolò's pale cheeks beneath his scruffy beard, visible even in the twilight. "So that's why I recognize the name. I was not there," he adds hastily, as though it might make any difference. "Jerusalem was my first real battle. You are very good with a sword, for a businessman."

In spite of himself, Yusuf's mouth twitches, almost a smile. "And you are not terribly good, for a soldier, though I suppose that is more understandable given that it was your first time."

Nicolò's flush deepens. "I managed to kill you, didn't I? Many times."

"Ha! 'Many,' he says! Only a handful, if we're being generous, and not so many as _I_ killed _you_. Though I suppose you have shown some improvement since." In truth, he's not being entirely fair; Nicolò is more than capable with a sword. If he possesses little in the way of artistry, he makes up for it with a certain brutal efficiency. But no need to let it go to his head.

"I'm better with a crossbow," Nicolò admits, looking down at his scabbard ruefully. "This sword wasn't even mine. I took it from a dead man when I ran out of arrows." He glances back at Yusuf, a tentative smile tugging at the edges of his lips. "Fighting with you was certainly educational."

"For me as well." Yusuf considers it for a moment. It's going to be a slow journey on foot to Fustat, and they're likely to run afoul of more than just bandits at some point. "We should fight again, for practice."

Something shutters in Nicolò's face. "I don't want to kill you anymore."

"I don't intend to give you the opportunity," Yusuf says drily. "Just sparring, Nicolò."

It's just disconcerting, to be studied so intently by a man whose eyes are so empty and unreadable. Murky waters, Yusuf thinks, revealing nothing of what lies beneath. Eventually, Nicolò nods and looks away, staring back down into the fire. "If you like."

Yusuf lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and chides himself for it. What does he care what this invader thinks of him, anyway? "Then I look forward to soundly defeating you, as usual," he says cheerfully. He ignores Nicolò's snort of laughter in favor of rummaging through his pack for something resembling dinner.

* * *

So this is how they cross the desert together: walking in the mornings and evenings, with a break in the middle to rest through the hottest part of the day, and sparring into the night when they're not too exhausted for it. Sometimes even when they are, because as Yusuf points out, bandits won't care how tired they are. They run into Bedouin tribesmen a handful of times, mostly peaceful encounters which give them the opportunity to barter what few possessions they have remaining in exchange for food and water, or directions to the nearest trading post or oasis. They never barter away their swords, though.

They rarely speak much during the daytime. It's too hot, their throats too parched, water too precious. Sometimes that comfortable silence extends into the evenings. Other nights, they swap stories—most of the telling on Yusuf's side, since he tends to wax poetic when given the opportunity, while Nicolò's tales tend to be brief and to the point, though often surprisingly incisive. Yusuf, who has always had an ear for language, begins picking up Nicolò's native Ligurian dialect and expanding his spoken Latin. Nicolò is not so quick to learn, but he sets himself to improving his Greek with dogged determination, as well as memorizing a few basic Arabic phrases so that he won't be set completely adrift if he and Yusuf part ways.

 _When_ they part ways, Yusuf reminds himself firmly. Likely in Alexandria, if not sooner.

The first few evenings they spar together, Nicolò fights _terribly_. His footwork is a mess, he hesitates when he should press his advantage, he leaves obvious openings for Yusuf to exploit. Yusuf very nearly feels guilty for winning. Finally, he throws all caution to the winds and attacks as though he really means to kill Nicolò again, cuts and spins and slashes until Nicolò, panicking, is forced to actually fight _back_. That bout ends with the tip of Nicolò's sword biting deep into the hollow of Yusuf's throat, and Yusuf laughs as he chokes on his own blood.

When he revives scant moments later—he barely had the opportunity to die before it was already healed—Nicolò has thrown his blade into the sand and is pacing around him, white-faced and furious. He shouts at Yusuf for several minutes in his native tongue, of which Yusuf can hardly catch one word out of ten, but the general gist of it is plain enough. Yusuf just waits him out, scrubbing idly at the blood on his unmarked neck before it can dry there and itch.

"Why?" Nicolò finally demands, once he's calmed enough to find the words in Greek. "Do you _want_ to die?"

"Not particularly," Yusuf says truthfully. "But I'd prefer to die on your blade and learn from it than in a true battle due to your _incompetence_ because you refused to improve your skills while you had the chance. Now pick up your sword and let's do this properly, hmm?"

Nicolò just stares at him for a long time. Those ghost-gray eyes aren't any easier to read now than before. Finally, he mutters a curse up to the uncaring skies and does, in fact, retrieve his blade.

Sparring goes much better after that, though they both do refrain from striking killing blows, as a rule. Because it's a waste of effort, Yusuf tells himself, and blood is a hassle to clean up when there's no water to spare.

* * *

Once, and once only, they both die of thirst, succumbing one after the other on the hot, uncaring sands.

It's deeply embarrassing to revive and find an oasis less than twenty minutes' walk away from where they collapsed. They agree never to mention the incident again.

Nicolò is particularly scrupulous about rationing their waterskins after that.

* * *

At a trading post near the Egyptian side of the desert, Yusuf convinces a caravan to hire them both on as guards as far as the young city of Cairo. The caravan had set out from Egypt with the intention of entering the Levant themselves, but had been convinced to turn back by the movements of the Fatimid army.

"And where there are soldiers, there will be bandits, deserters, and ill-favored hangers-on," Yusuf reports to Nicolò after securing their employment. "So Mustafa would prefer a few more swordsmen looking out for his goods so long as we're following roughly the same route. After Cairo, he'll try his luck to the south instead."

"He's willing to hire me on as well? In spite of…" Nicolò gestures wryly to his own face.

"Egyptians tend to be rather cosmopolitan," Yusuf assures him with a wink. "You're an oddity, that's all. At least so long as you Franks don't try to conquer Alexandria again. They still remember the Romans, you know."

Nicolò's mouth twists. "I expect it's only a matter of time."

It's a much easier journey with the caravan. They don't have to ration their food and water quite so stringently, and they occasionally get turns riding the camels. Nicolò is rather in awe of the beasts, at least until one spits directly in his face, and Yusuf laughs so hard he can barely keep his own seat. Camels may be worth their weight in gold in the desert, but they're also _mean_.

And Yusuf has always thrived in the company of others. He makes friends easily with Mustafa and his assistants, as well as the lone guard who already traveled with them. It's nice to joke together as they walk or ride, and to share a campfire with a larger group. And it is a balm to his soul to have others join him in the daily prayers; he'd let a few of the Salats slip, when he and Nicolò were alone, always feeling this infidel's curious eyes on him as he knelt five times each day. Not that Nicolò had ever been disrespectful—not even in the earliest days, when he was still skittish and wary. But prayer for Yusuf is such a _communal_ activity. It never felt quite right on his own.

Still. At some point, he realizes that he misses the companionable solitude he and Nicolò shared. Even though they rubbed each other the wrong way from time to time, stumbled across hidden pitfalls in conversation, swords jarring occasionally as they sparred; even though Nicolò had taken part in the slaughter of Jerusalem, and Yusuf knows he should still hate him for it.

And yet.

Nicolò falls silent more often than not, now, unable to communicate effectively in the Egyptian dialect. But he listens carefully as the others speak around him, and Yusuf can see him sometimes shaping the words silently to himself. And though a few of the other men eye him with suspicion and mutter a bit too loudly behind his back, Mustafa himself praises his watchfulness on the road: "That man has the patience of Ayyub! He is always watching and waiting."

He is far better suited to guarding a caravan than Yusuf, in fact, which he demonstrates by being the first to spot the raiding party's approach across the sands.

The attackers are mounted, which gives them an advantage; the caravan has three camels, but no horses. But there are only five of them, against Yusuf, Nicolò, and the third guard, Sayed. This may seem like poor odds, but Yusuf and Nicolò exchange a grim nod, knowing otherwise.

They have not sparred together since joining the caravan, but all of those evenings alone together in the desert now bear fruit. Sayed is hardly even a factor. Yusuf and Nicolò _dance_.

It feels almost like a dream, afterward. Every move Yusuf makes, Nicolò is there behind him. Nicolò slashes at one horse's saddle so that its rider will fall off directly into Yusuf's circle of attack; Yusuf spins the man around and gives him a solid shove to stumble directly into Nicolò's extended sword. In the end, they dispatch four of the raiders between them while Sayed still tangles alone with the fifth, and Nicolò shoots a quick glance in Yusuf's direction before racing off to Sayed's aid.

Sayed is a perfectly able if uninspired swordsman, but the final surviving raider is vicious and desperate, clearly knowing he has nothing left to lose, and lashes out with a viper's speed. Sayed simply isn't quick enough to counter him.

Nicolò is, though, and cuts between them to intercept what would have been a killing blow from the raider's blade. He catches the brunt of it with his sword, but a twist of the attacker's saif cuts deeply into Nicolò's forearm, exposing it to the bone, blood dripping freely into the scuffed sands. Nicolò simply grimaces and knees the man in the groin, then kicks him backward when he staggers. By then Yusuf is there to finish him off.

Yusuf shoves the body aside with an oath and rushes to Nicolò, surprised to realize that his hand is shaking when he reaches out to grasp Nicolò's bloody wrist. The fear that claws its way up his chest is completely ridiculous, of course—he's given Nicolò far worse himself and watched the flesh knit itself back together. But he won't quite believe until he sees it for himself.

"I'm fine," Nicolò mutters, low enough that only Yusuf could hear, even if Sayed turns out to understand Greek. "How much do you think he saw?"

Yusuf's grip tightens briefly on Nicolò's warm, smooth skin. The only trace of the wound is the blood staining his skin and slashed sleeve. "Best not risk it. Bandage it up and pretend?" He looks up into Nicolò's face, so close to his own, and almost feels rather than sees the faintest nod of his head.

"Use the shirt, it's ruined anyway," Nicolò says wryly. "I'll try to remember to do everything left-handed for a few days."

Yusuf nods and tears a strip from the bloodstained sleeve, tying it tightly around where the injury might have been. It looks respectable enough, he judges, and why would anyone think to question it?

When they return to the caravan, Sayed claps Nicolò on the back in thanks. He was one of the more suspicious ones, Yusuf remembers; he seems accepting enough of Nicolò now, and his recounting of the skirmish to the others raises them both in the caravan's estimation. After that, Nicolò is more readily welcomed around the campfire at night, and even begins exchanging smiles and halting words with a few of the other men. They laugh at his fumbling attempts at Arabic, but not out of cruelty, and begin broadening his vocabulary using gestures and pantomime. Of course, the expressions they start with are far cruder than anything Yusuf has attempted to teach him thus far, and Nicolò's cheeks take on a permanently rosy hue once he catches on. Yusuf grins at him from across the fire, and Nicolò's flush only deepens, but he goes along with it gamely enough, clearly pleased to be included.

It's a new side to Nicolò, one Yusuf has only barely glimpsed before, and he finds himself oddly enchanted by it. That Nicolò so willingly risked himself for Sayed, a man who'd only previously shown him distrust if not outright hostility—it tugs at a tangled knot behind Yusuf's ribcage, loosens something within him.

He's not willing to examine it too closely, or put a name to it, but it pleases him to see Nicolò _happy_. And for now, that's enough.

* * *

They part ways from the caravan just outside the walls of Cairo, though Mustafa invites them to continue on southward. Yusuf declines with a show of regret; it had been a good job, as these things go, but now that they're practically in sight of Fustat, his thoughts turn to home. The path ahead of him is long enough as it is without any further detours. Mustafa nods in understanding and presents them both with generous purses, telling them they more than earned it.

"You could have gone with them, if you wanted," Yusuf remarks to Nicolò, once it's just the two of them alone again. He jingles his new purse thoughtfully. "He certainly pays well enough!"

Nicolò shrugs, flashing him only the briefest of sidelong glances before returning his attention to the road. "Mustafa is a decent man, but I would prefer to continue onward with you."

"Good," Yusuf murmurs, without really knowing why, and doesn't bring it up again.

* * *

They don't actually need to stop in Fustat at all, given their earnings from Mustafa's caravan, but it's one of Yusuf's favorite cities and he welcomes the return to civilization. He finds a hostel he remembers fondly from his dissolute youth and books them a room for the week, then drags Nicolò directly to his favorite bathhouse. "You have an unnatural obsession with bathing," Nicolò informs him.

"And you could use one," Yusuf retorts. "The desert winds may have dissipated your stench while we traveled, but I'm not sharing a room with you in this state."

Nicolò ducks his head, grumbling, but goes along willingly enough. After the baths, Yusuf bullies him into visiting the barber as well, then deems them both suitable to purchase new clothing without risk of being laughed out of the marketplace. They cobble together a meal out of various food stalls in the market, and Yusuf delights in introducing Nicolò to a few of his favorite delicacies. Mostly, Yusuf tells himself, because he himself hasn't eaten a proper meal in months; Nicolò's enjoyment of the new flavors is merely an entertaining side benefit.

It's well past dark when they return to their rented room, and Yusuf collapses onto the bed with a moan of pleasure. A _bed_ , a proper bed. He can't even remember the last time he enjoyed such a luxury. That he must share it with Nicolò is hardly even an afterthought. Yusuf has shared many a bed in his time: with his brothers, with fellow students, with complete strangers in hostels like this one.

Nicolò hesitates only a moment before sitting at the opposite side of the bed, carefully removing his sword belt and outerwear. Yusuf, already starting to doze off, watches him through slitted eyes. Really, they both ought to just burn the clothes they've been traveling in; they'll probably fall to pieces if they try to wash them. He thinks he tells Nicolò as much, but possibly he's asleep before he finishes the sentence.

That night he dreams of the women again. For once, they're not in the middle of a battle. They're in the mountains, though like none he's ever seen before, massive and rugged. The taller woman leads their horses carefully up a rocky slope, clicking her teeth and murmuring in an alien tongue; the other follows behind with her bow strung, dark eyes watchful. She stops them once, aims and swiftly looses a single arrow, then runs off laughing to fetch her quarry: some kind of bird, presumably for their cookpot. When she returns, she presents it to her companion with an elaborate bow. The tall one laughs and bends down to cup her face, kissing her sweetly.

Yusuf drifts slowly into consciousness, feeling as though he's floating up and away from the dream, the edges of it gradually fading as he eases awake. His skin tingles with the memory of that kiss, as though he were the woman receiving it. Their room has taken on a blue-gray cast with the predawn light; any minute now, he expects to hear the muezzins' call to prayer.

He turns his head to see Nicolò's beside him, mere inches away. His eyes are blinking open, too, still heavy-lidded, staring at Yusuf.

"The women," Nicolò murmurs, his voice rough with sleep. "Do you dream them, too?"

Yusuf's throat feels very dry, all at once. How had he ever thought Nicolò's eyes colorless? This close, in the earliest morning light, he can pick out brilliant flecks of blue and green and silver. Nicolò's eyes are the waters of the Mediterranean, shifting and fathomless. A man could so easily drown in their depths. "Yes," he rasps out, remembering the question. "They were in the mountains. They were…"

 _In love_ , he doesn't say, because these are words he will not speak into being between them.

Nicolò props his head up on one hand, never breaking Yusuf's gaze. "I had wondered if you shared those dreams. Not at first, but as they continued… Are they like us, do you think?"

Yusuf swallows hard. "Like us?" he repeats helplessly.

"Immortal, I mean."

"Oh. I don't know. I suppose I never really let myself consider that they might be real."

Nicolò hums low in his throat, eyes slipping closed in contemplation. Yusuf tries to remember how to breathe. "I think they must be," he finally says. "If we are both dreaming them, there must be a purpose to it. To this...gift we share."

"You think it a gift?" Yusuf asks softly.

Nicolò's eyes open again, meeting his unerringly. "At first, no. I thought God had deemed me unworthy and cast me back out again." His lips curve into a self-deprecating smile. "But now I'm not so sure. I no longer think you're a demon sent to plague me, either, if you were wondering."

"I wish I could share your assurance," Yusuf says wryly, and Nicolò laughs and rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. Yusuf finds himself grinning in response. He can't seem to look away.

At length, Nicolò sighs. "There must be some purpose to it," he says again. "Yusuf…"

Outside, distantly, they can hear the adhan called from the nearby minarets, breaking the stillness between them with a piercing cry. Yusuf can feel Nicolò's gaze on him as he fumbles for his outerwear and prepares to join the mosque for Fajr. He hesitates at the door, then glances over his shoulder. "Go back to sleep, Nicolò," he says. "I'll return shortly."

Nicolò smiles, loose and unguarded with sleepiness in a way Yusuf has never truly seen him before. "I know you will."

Yusuf's mind is perhaps not so focused on God as it should be during that prayer.

* * *

It takes a few days, but Yusuf manages to barter them passage aboard a riverboat heading down the Nile to Alexandria.

"It's a merchant my family has worked with in the past," he explains to Nicolò as they eat lunch in a public garden. "We'll have to earn our passage—he needs extra hands to load and unload cargo along the way. But it's honest work, and not difficult." It will likely be slower than traveling overland, following the winding river delta and stopping at every minor town along the way, but Mustafa's money will only get them so far. Better to save it for Alexandria.

"That sounds fair," Nicolò agrees. "When do we leave?"

"Dawn tomorrow."

Nicolò sighs and leans back on the bench, looking at the garden around them. "I think I'll be sorry to leave. This is a beautiful city. I never expected…" He cuts himself off abruptly, frowning.

Something cold settles into the pit of Yusuf's stomach. He does his best to make light of it. "Never expected what? That Muslim infidels could live in so civilized a fashion?"

Now that Nicolò's beard has been so neatly trimmed, it's even easier to see the flush staining his pale cheeks. "Not exactly, but...well. I was wrong, anyway. I'm sorry, Yusuf." He shrugs, staring down at the ground. "It's what I've been told all my life."

This is no longer about the relative merits of a particular Fatimid city, Yusuf knows. Somehow, over their months traveling together, he has managed to push aside the memories of precisely how they first met. Of why, exactly, Nicolò di Genova had been in Jerusalem. 

"I'm not one of your priests, to offer absolution," he says tightly, brushing the crumbs from his tunic and getting to his feet. "So don't waste your apologies on me."

Nicolò looks up at him, and Yusuf can't begin to pick out the myriad emotions lurking in the depths of his eyes. "What would you have me do, then?"

"It's not for me to tell you," Yusuf snaps. "Is that why you've followed me all this way, Nicolò? Out of some bullshit desire for atonement? Am I to play your confessor?"

"No, of course not! Please, Yusuf—"

"Then why?"

"Because I _know_ you," Nicolò says, utterly sincere in his desperation. "Because we are the same, you and I. Because it _is_ a gift that binds us, and even in Jerusalem I knew it, and so did you."

Yusuf stands transfixed for a moment. He has to ball his hands into fists at his sides, fingernails cutting into the soft skin of his palms, to keep from reaching out to him. But he can't, he _can't_ , no matter how soft and luminous this man's eyes are in the predawn light, no matter how passionately he speaks now. Because Nicolò is _wrong_. "We are not the same," Yusuf tells him, slowly and precisely. "And you hardly know me at all."

Nicolò sucks in a breath, as though he's been punched. "Yusuf…"

"I have errands to run, if we are to leave at dawn," Yusuf says, turning away. "I'll see you back at the hostel tonight."

"Wait." Nicolò catches his arm, then immediately releases it at Yusuf's cold look. "You will still...that is, I may still accompany you?"

Yusuf shrugs. "To Alexandria, yes, as we'd agreed from the start. I'll not set you adrift over a petty argument, Nicolò."

"To Alexandria," Nicolò echoes, a little woodenly. "All right. I'll see you tonight."

The rest of the day passes in a blur. Truth be told, Yusuf half expects Nicolò to be gone by the time he stumbles back to their shared room, very late that night. But Nicolò is there, curled up on his side of the bed. His breathing is even, but Yusuf knows he's awake. He lets him pretend, though, because that's easier than meeting his eyes.

* * *

Their journey down the Nile stretches out interminably. The work is not difficult, as promised, leaving them hours to simply idle on deck, watching the fertile river delta unfurl around them. It's a lovely country, and Yusuf should have enjoyed the trip. But he and Nicolò dance awkwardly around each other, always painstakingly polite, all their easy companionship lost. 

But how could it ever have been otherwise? Yusuf has always been very clear about his intention to return home to Mahdia. His vague sense of responsibility toward Nicolò ends on the docks of Alexandria. There Nicolò can board any number of ships heading to any number of destinations, even if he doesn't choose to go back to Genova. And that's far better than anyone else would have done by him—this foreign invader, this murderer, this man who came to their shores with hatred in his heart determined to slaughter anyone of Yusuf's faith, along with anyone else who just happened to get in the way.

Just because he has proven himself soft-spoken and helpful, it does not erase his past. Just because he is kind to _Yusuf_ does not somehow redeem him. One exception does not make a rule. And it is not Yusuf's responsibility to help him become a better man, if that's even something he's capable of.

( _He is, though,_ Yusuf thinks, hopes, won't let himself consider.)

Just because they are both somehow immune to death, it does not mean they must be shackled together. Perhaps this gift of theirs will fade with time, anyway. Who is to say? Yusuf does not know how much time he has left on this earth—no man does—but what he has, he intends to spend with his _family_. As a man should. And there is no place for Nicolò there.

* * *

They dock in Alexandria in late afternoon, and help the merchant unload the last of his goods. By then it's too late to even think about making further travel arrangements, so Yusuf suggests wearily that they find a room together for the night. Nicolò's eyes widen in surprise, which stings a little—did he really think Yusuf would just abandon him the instant they stepped foot in the city?—but he agrees readily enough.

The room they acquire contains two narrow cots, which is a blessing as far as Yusuf's concerned. He could use a little physical space between them as they sleep.

He rises for Fajr, then returns to the room to see if he can snatch a little more rest before starting the day. But Nicolò is already awake and fully dressed when Yusuf slips inside. He's sitting on his cot with his hands clasped on his knees, his head bowed. For a moment, Yusuf assumes he must be praying, himself—a common enough occurrence, though Nicolò doesn't seem to keep to any particular schedule for prayer. But he lifts his head at once when Yusuf tugs the door quietly shut behind him, and he does not have the look of one interrupted. His eyes are a little bloodshot, the circles beneath them darker than usual.

"Did you sleep at all?" Yusuf asks, his tone unwontedly soft.

Nicolò's shoulders lift briefly, not quite a shrug. "Some. Enough. What is your plan for the day?"

Yusuf sits at the edge of his own cot, facing him, so that their eyes can meet at the same level. "Make inquiries at the docks, find a ship heading westward. Talk my way aboard it." He offers Nicolò a small smile. "I've been told I can be fairly persuasive. And anyway, I'm an able enough sailor, I can work my way home."

"To Mahdia," Nicolò says quietly.

"Eventually, yes. I doubt I'll be so lucky as to find a ship heading there directly, it's quite a long journey. But I know the Mediterranean well, I'll get there step by step." He hesitates, then adds, "Genova is in the same general direction, at least to start. If you'd like, we can continue on together part of the way, maybe as far as Sicily or Malta."

He doesn't know what possesses him to make the offer. Why prolong this...whatever it is, between them? It would be kinder to cut the cord now. 

From the flash of hope mingled with hurt in Nicolò's face, he's of a similar mind. "I...do not think I will be returning to Genova," he finally says, jaw clenching. "There is nothing left for me there."

Over their time traveling together, he's only made the vaguest of passing references to family, or his life before Jerusalem. Yusuf supposes this shouldn't be a surprise. "All right. Where will you go, then?"

"What does it matter to you?" Nicolò snaps, then seems to immediately regret it. He squeezes his eyes shut a moment and breathes slowly. "Forgive me, that was ill said. You have been a good friend to me these past months. Better than I deserved."

Yusuf sighs and leans back, regarding him. "Is that what we are, then? Friends?"

Nicolò swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I would like us to be."

"I would too, I think," Yusuf says, a little wistfully.

"Yusuf…" Nicolò searches his face. For what, Yusuf can't be sure. "You need to go home to your family, of course I understand that. But I cannot believe it coincidence that we've found each other like this, that we share this gift between us. That we died on each other's blades and came back together. There _has_ to be a purpose to it."

"You keep saying that," Yusuf sighs. "Please, Nicolò, enlighten me. What do you suppose this mystical purpose to be?"

"I don't _know_." Nicolò sounds nearly as frustrated as Yusuf is beginning to feel himself. "I've prayed on it so many times, but…" He scrubs a hand across his face. "Perhaps God does not judge me worthy of an answer."

"Perhaps God wants us to figure it out for ourselves," Yusuf says drily. "You Christians always seem to struggle without someone else giving the orders. How well has that worked out for you so far, hmm?"

Nicolò flinches. "Is this about Jerusalem?" That had not been Yusuf's intention, but then again, doesn't it always come back to that, really? No matter how they have skirted around the topic, it lingers in the air like a miasma. Doggedly, Nicolò presses on. "I know we were in the wrong. When the city fell…" He swallows hard, looking sick. "I saw…"

"Yes?" Yusuf provokes him, brutally. He still shudders awake from nightmares of the fall of Jerusalem. They have never once spoken of this. "Tell me, Nicolò, what did you see? Because I saw the streets literally running red with blood. I saw your army _slaughter_ civilians, Muslim and Christian and Jewish alike. Men and women and children—"

"I know," Nicolò says hoarsely. "I thought I had finally died in truth, and awoken in Hell."

"It was a Hell of your own making! You _pilgrims_ ," Yusuf spits out. "Tell me, what kind of pilgrim massacres the innocent in the name of God? What kind of God do you think you pray to, who would welcome such blood on His doorstep?"

Nicolò is shaking his head, over and over again. "We were wrong. I didn't realize. I didn't understand." He reaches across the space between them desperately, clutching at Yusuf's hands. "That's why I left, Yusuf, that's why I ran. That's why I went with you, because I could not condone it. I swear to you, I killed none but other soldiers. An arrow caught me when we took the city, just inside the gates, and by the time I revived… I took no part in that, I _swear_ to you. I did nothing."

A part of Yusuf is honestly relieved to hear it. He had not wanted to believe this man capable of such atrocities, such wanton cruelty. But even so—"I see," Yusuf says. His voice sounds so cold, even to his own ears. "So you stood by and watched and did _nothing_."

Nicolò lets go of him as though burnt. His head bows. "You're right," he whispers. "Forgive me. The man I was then—"

"The man you were then is the same man you are now." The words feel so heavy in Yusuf's mouth, but true. This has always been the struggle between them. He doesn't even feel angry anymore, just resigned. Nicolò's lips part, and Yusuf raises a hand, stilling him. "I don't mean that you should always be judged for the very worst of what you have or have not done, nor am I placing some ridiculous penance on you. It's just…your past will always be a part of you. What that means and how you decide to live with it is up to you. You're not the only one who discovered the ugliest parts of yourself at Jerusalem," he adds with a grimace. Yusuf's own capacity for violence is something that settles uneasily within him for now. He hadn't known he would be quite so very _good_ at it.

"There is no part of you that is ugly," Nicolò says quietly.

Yusuf laughs without mirth. "Of course there is. I'm only human, after all. And so are you, Nicolò." He gets slowly to his feet. Every part of him feels weighted down. "Please stop asking me for forgiveness. That's not something I or anyone else can grant you." He glances out the narrow window. What little he can see of the sky is bright with morning sunlight. "I think it's time for me to go."

Nicolò, too, stands. His face is very pale. "I understand. Thank you for...well. Thank you." His mouth twists in what might almost be a smile. "I'll miss you, you know."

Yusuf hesitates, then extends a hand. Nicolò clasps it tightly. "And I you, strangely enough. Until we meet again."

"Will we?" Nicolò asks, releasing him, and Yusuf gives him a small smile of his own.

"You're the one who believes we share some higher purpose," he says, and if it doesn't come out quite so teasingly as he intended, it's close enough. "Have a little faith, my friend."

He gathers up his small pack of belongings while Nicolò simply watches, sitting back down on his cot. At the door, Yusuf turns back to give him one last nod.

"Do you think we'll dream of each other, now?" Nicolò asks unexpectedly. "Like we do those two women?"

It startles a real laugh out of Yusuf. "Who knows? Sometimes, Nicolò, I think I must have dreamed _you_ entirely."

There are months of sea voyage ahead of him, before he finally steps foot in Mahdia again. He dreams of the women many times over; of Jerusalem, in all its horrors, now and then. But never once of Nicolò.


	3. my reasons for defying reason

His niece Sarra's baby is born, a healthy, beautiful boy. She names him after her favorite uncle. "God grant him your good fortune and longevity, Uncle," she teases Yusuf with a smile.

His heart does a complicated somersault in his chest, not a pleasant sensation. He strains to return her smile. "Are you trying to bless the lad or curse him?" he demands, aiming for joviality and probably not quite hitting the mark. Sarra laughs, still cradling her new son to her chest, so hopefully he's gotten away with it. On the other side of the bed, though, Maryam gives Yusuf an unreadable glance, and he has to look away. That just gives him the excuse to focus on his new great-nephew again, which is not a bad thing. Babies are so _tiny_ and perfect.

But in the following weeks and months, almost without giving it conscious thought, Yusuf begins setting his affairs in order. His nephew Ibrahim has his eye on a pretty young neighbor and wants to establish himself in the al-Kaysani business so that he can approach her family; Yusuf teaches him how to take over management of the accounts. He scrupulously pays off the handful of small debts he owes to various other merchants in Mahdia, and squares away those owed to him in return. He makes little gifts of his artworks to a few friends, gives his collection of poetry to Maryam as congratulations on her first grandchild. And when Ahmed begins planning a trade expedition to the new Norman rulers in Sicily, Yusuf volunteers to accompany it and make a home for himself in Palermo for a time to cultivate new trading partners for the family business.

"I've been looking for a change," he says by way of explanation. "And I'm already fluent in both Greek and Latin."

Ahmed, whose joints ache too badly for sea voyages himself these days, and whose sons are far better suited to sailing than diplomacy, agrees readily to this proposal.

A few nights before they're scheduled to sail, Yusuf returns home after Isha only to be intercepted by Maryam in the hall. She follows him into his chamber and sits primly on the foot of his bed. Her rich brown eyes are serious and intent on his face.

"Brother," she says quietly, "I think it's time you told me what happened to you at Jerusalem."

Yusuf takes a deep breath, and when he exhales, the whole tale just pours out of him.

By the time he finishes, it must be well past midnight. Maryam's eyes are a little glassy, and she sits with him in silence for long minutes. Finally, she murmurs, "And here I thought I was the storyteller in this family."

Yusuf laughs a little wetly. "You are. That's how you know this must be true, incredible though it sounds."

"I never said I did not believe it." She studies his face intently. "I always knew Jerusalem had changed you, Yusuf. I just had not realized…" Her hand traces the line of his thick, black beard. "So you truly have not aged a day, have you?"

"It seems not." He covers her hand with his own. "Maryam, you understand why I could not speak of this, don't you?"

"Of course. I happen to agree with your Frank—this must be a gift from God, and I can think of none more deserving than you." She takes an unsteady breath. "But I can all too easily imagine that others might not see it so."

Yusuf gives her a wry smile. "I'm still not entirely convinced it's not a curse. And he's not _my_ Frank. Technically, he's not even a Frank at all. He's from Genova."

"Even worse," she retorts, and they share a grin. "But I think he _is_ yours, all the same. Oh, never mind that. You don't intend to ever return from Sicily, do you?"

"No," he admits. It's the first time he's really acknowledged it to himself, even. "After a few years...I don't know. A letter, perhaps, making my farewells. Or have someone tell you all I died in some accident. I don't know, I hate to think that way, but…"

She cups his face in both hands. "You do what you need to keep yourself safe. We'll be all right, I promise you. We'll miss you terribly, of course, but we'll be all right."

"I know you will," he whispers, and kisses her brow.

At the doorway, she pauses, glancing back at him. "Will you look for him? Your Genovese?"

This time, he doesn't argue it. "Maybe. But I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"Well," she points out with a rueful smile, "you certainly have time to figure it out."

* * *

Leaving Mahdia is not particularly difficult; he's been sailing away from this city since he was hardly more than a boy, with scant regard to how long it might be until his return. And he will come back someday: he promises himself that much. Just not for a long, long time, when there will be no one left to remember his face.

Leaving his sister and her family is so much harder, all the worse because none but Maryam know it's truly goodbye. Sarra doesn't even come to see him off, busy at home with her toddler; she just gives him a quick kiss at the door the night before, telling him with a wink to bring his namesake back an exotic gift when he returns from Sicily. (He makes a mental note to send the child something before he disappears for good.) Ibrahim is there at the docks, hugging him firmly and promising that he'll manage the accounts perfectly in Yusuf's absence, eager to prove himself. But it's just another trade voyage to them, even knowing that he plans to remain in Palermo for a while; a few years at most before they see their uncle again. He comes and goes with the wind. This is nothing to remark upon.

Maryam hugs him tightly for long minutes. Neither of them can think of a single thing to say—a first for their family. Finally she releases him, and he presses one last kiss to her brow before turning away.

His brother Tawfiq accompanies him aboard the ship, still spry as ever on deck despite his paunch and gray hair. They pass a pleasant enough journey. Tawfiq has never been the cleverest of the siblings; he makes a few jokes wondering when age will ever finally catch up to his baby brother, but beyond that, he doesn't seem to have noticed anything amiss. Once in Palermo, he concludes his end of the business within a month, and takes his leave cheerfully enough. He's the last of the al-Kaysani family to ever lay eyes on Yusuf.

Yusuf comes to like Palermo well enough. It's an attractive city, despite the current Norman overlords; over a century of Arab rule left its stamp in the graceful curves and domes of its architecture, in the brightly colored tiles. Yusuf rents a house in town with his brother's funds and lives there quietly for nearly a decade. Later, those years will hardly even be a blur in his memory; they were placid and lonely, but pleasant enough. He works hard on behalf of the family business, and hopes that will suffice as his parting gift to the people he loves most in the world. His business associates assume he must be Ahmed al-Kaysani's son, not brother, and he never bothers to correct them.

A fever passes through the city one winter, which Yusuf contracts and dies of alone in his little house. He revives, of course, both relieved and a little depressed that there was no one to even notice he'd been ill. He volunteers to help tend to the sick after that, confident that he really can survive anything, and even carries on a brief affair with a young physician. Robert is of mixed ancestry, born to a Norman father and Arab mother, with curly black hair and curiously pale gray eyes. He's certainly not the first lover Yusuf has taken up with since Jerusalem, but Robert is the only one to last beyond a few nights. They part amicably enough in the summer, when Robert decides to travel to Baghdad to continue his medical studies.

"Nothing in Europe can compare," he laments. "My mother's people are _so_ far advanced in medicine, it's honestly a bit embarrassing. I might use her family name in Baghdad just to be taken seriously." He rolls over onto his stomach, watching Yusuf sketch. "Will you give me a drawing to remember you by? Have you ever even drawn yourself?"

"Of course," Yusuf laughs, and quickly sketches out a rather satirical image of himself. He doesn't have much practice in self-portraiture, but, well, he's been familiar with his own face for rather a long time now. It hasn't changed in more than twenty years.

He's secretly relieved not to have been asked for a sketch of _Robert_ instead. Not that Yusuf hasn't tried his hand at drawing him, but every time, those eyes seem to find themselves in a rather different face.

* * *

He dreams of Nicolò now with some regularity. Never Nicolò alone; only ever in the company of at least one of the two women, as though he merely plays a supporting role in those dreams. The backdrops shift and change over the years; sometimes in cities, more often on the open road. They spar together as he and Nicolò once did, the tall woman spinning and dancing around him with her axe. Once she kills him, brutally, and Yusuf awakens with a cry. But the next time he dreams of them, they seem perfectly friendly once again.

Sometimes they fight others as a trio, and it's both beautiful and horrifying to watch. Other times they sit around a campfire together, passing around a wineskin and talking animatedly, and Yusuf's heart aches for missing him. How did this happen? When did he truly begin to _care_? He hasn't seen this man in well over twenty years; they had traveled together for a bare handful of months. He should not matter so much.

For a year and more, Nicolò vanishes from the dreams entirely, and it nearly drives Yusuf mad wondering what could have become of him. Could his gift of immortality have run out? Is Nicolò gone from the world in truth? Or did he simply part ways with the women? If so, why? And for how long?

What if that was Yusuf's only hope of finding him again, and he squandered it?

That's when he begins planning out his departure from Palermo in earnest. He still can't quite figure out how to fake his own death, or if he should just disappear and hope Maryam will come up with some explanation for the rest of the family. But that doesn't seem very fair. In the meantime, he finds an abandoned farm out in the Sicilian countryside that he uses to create a sort of cache for himself, hiding away extra coins and clothing and provisions, so that whenever he's ready to leave, he'll be able to truly vanish.

His opportunity comes late one spring evening, when a fire breaks out in the poorer part of town. Yusuf rushes out to help carry buckets of water to douse it, but the flames catch and spread through several houses, and there's little the community can do to stop it. When Yusuf hears someone screaming from an upper window, he doesn't even think before rushing into the burning home.

It's not the fire that kills him, at least the first time; it's the second story collapsing on top of his head.

Many neighbors saw him run into the house just before it collapsed. None witnessed his resurrection, or saw him slip away some time later, still well before the flames fully burned out.

Fire, Yusuf decides, is absolutely _not_ his favorite way to die. But since it happened, he may as well seize the moment.

Thus he bids a private farewell to Palermo.

After stopping at his cache to clothe himself and gather his supplies, he makes his slow, careful way overland to the port of Messina. It takes him more than a week, but what does that matter? Time no longer has any meaning for him. He's not beholden to anyone or anything; as far as the world is concerned, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani is dead. Perhaps a few decades later than expected, but dead all the same.

True freedom, he finds, is rather lonely.

Yusuf _likes_ people. He likes being beholden to them, nurturing those complex webs of history and experience and affection that create true relationships between one person and another. These past years in Palermo, even in spite of himself, he's made friends—with business associates, with neighbors, with the clever old woman who sells the world's best makroudh down in the marketplace. He held them all at arm's length, knowing he would need to leave them, but nevertheless. Now he is no one, and knows nobody. He cuts his hair so short it hardly even curls and shaves off his beard, so as to be less recognizable in case he encounters anyone who might have known him, and feels a stranger even to himself.

In Messina, he finds a ship bound for Genova, and without thinking twice talks the captain into hiring him on as a deckhand.

* * *

Genova is not a beautiful city, by Yusuf's standards, but it has a certain rustic appeal. There's some lovely architecture here and there, and Yusuf appreciates the way it nestles between the sea and mountains. There's certainly natural beauty in abundance surrounding it, even if the streets are rather cramped and dim, and the buildings all trip into one another as if by accident.

He has no idea what brought him here.

Or, well, he _does_ , of course he knows. But it seems ridiculous now, walking up the narrow streets alone. There's no reason to believe Nicolò would be here; he'd never given the slightest indication that he ever intended to return at all. And even if he still has family in the city, how would Yusuf even begin to track them down? Nicolò never even gave him a family name, just _Nicolò di Genova_. As through he'd sprung fully-formed from these cobblestoned streets. Stretching his memory, Yusuf knows he'd mentioned older brothers—they were both the youngest of their siblings, he remembers discussing that once—and a mother. Well, all men have mothers, that meant nothing. The Christian soldiers had had to finance their own so-called pilgrimages to Jerusalem, so presumably Nicolò's family had some money, or he had a patron of some sort; then again, if he'd come late with the naval fleet, perhaps it was different for a sailor. Or crossbowman.

How much did Yusuf ever know Nicolò, really?

No, that's not fair. He knows that Nicolò is slow to learn languages but relentless in his determination. He knows he has the patience of Ayyub and can become chillingly calm in battle. He knows that he is kind, when given the opportunity, and inclined to care for others before himself, always.

He knows with bone-deep certainty that Nicolò is not in Genova, and so he leaves on the next tide.

* * *

Some months later, on yet another ship somewhere in the Aegean Sea, Yusuf awakens in his narrow hammock with tears on his cheeks. He dreamed of Nicolò again, for the first time since Palermo. He was strolling through a city marketplace with the dark-eyed woman, that tiny flicker of a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth, watching fondly as she spoke rapidly and laughed at herself. She slung an arm around his waist, squeezing for a moment, then dragged him off to haggle with a food vendor over a selection of pastries. He looked so calm, so at peace. Yusuf's heart wants to hammer its way out of his chest.

During his idle hours on deck, he finds himself sketching what he can remember of the dreams—the busy marketplace, the crenellated city walls, the gleaming spires that reach up behind Nicolò and the women. He scratches idly at his cheek as he draws; he's finally allowing his beard to grow out again, and it's at that awkward in-between stage. It's good to feel the cold wind in his hair again, at least. The other sailors on this particular vessel enjoy his drawings—they make frequent requests of him, as though it's some sort of game—and one fellow, Marko, plops down beside him now.

"Ah, Constantinople!" he sighs. "One of my favorite ports, let me tell you. There's a woman I know runs a certain house down by the docks, if you catch my meaning—"

"Wait," Yusuf says, his hand stilling on the page. "You know this place?"

"Of course! You're a talented artist." Marko reaches out to trace one part. "Those walls, the ramparts—see? I would know those anywhere. But of course you would know that, you're the one drawing them!"

Yusuf stares down at his own work, mind racing. He's never actually been to Constantinople himself. He had no way to recognize it. "Of course," he echoes numbly. "I would have to, wouldn't I?"

This particular ship is bound for Smyrna; it takes them another two weeks to make port, and Yusuf feels like he might fly out of his own skin at any moment. What if they move on before he can get there? How will he track them down next? He accepts his pay from the quartermaster and practically races ashore, then spends the next several hours asking anyone willing to speak with him what the quickest route would be to Constantinople.

Finally, he manages to find a smaller trading vessel bound up the Turkish coast and then into the Sea of Marmara. It will take well over a week, if they're lucky, but still better than the overland route. For this, Yusuf actually has to pay for his own passage with coin, but it's worth it. It has to be.

"Please, wait for me," he whispers to the sea before him, clutching tight to the rail. "Stay in one place just a little bit longer, please."

He still has no idea what greater purpose this immortality is meant to serve, but surely, _surely_ , it is not to be alone.


	4. darkness and fears to appease

When Yusuf walks away from him in Alexandria, Nicolò does not have the faintest idea what comes next. He sits in that little room for a long while, just watching the light through the narrow window brighten and shift over the course of the morning. All of his conversations with Yusuf echo inside his head, as though he might somehow be able to catch the moment when it all slipped sideways. As though he might set them back on course.

He doesn't know what to do.

_You Christians always seem to struggle without someone else giving the orders. How well has that worked out for you so far, hmm?_

Nicolò laughs, the sound of it cracked and broken even to his own ears. All his life he's struggled with obedience, has bent and twisted himself to try to fit into the molds others have set for him. The dutiful son, the penitent brother, the soldier of Christ; all ill-fitting roles he tried to cloak himself in. No, it hasn't served him well at all thus far in his life.

Yet it brought him here. To Yusuf, however briefly. He has many regrets in his thirty years of life, but not that.

So: here he now is, in Alexandria, unmoored. All he can do is keep moving.

He wanders the streets aimlessly for a time, taking it all in. Alexandria is familiar and alien all at once: the odors of salt and sewage and sea air, the riot of colors amongst the market stalls, the bustle and noise of people. Yusuf was right: Nicolò does not even begin to stand out in such a city, which seems populated by nearly as many Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines as Arabs. Here and there, Nicolò can hear snatches of languages he recognizes: various forms of Greek and Latin, the occasional word or phrase he can now pick out of Arabic, even a pair of sailors shouting at each other in a different dialect of his native Ligurian. It leaves his head spinning. The heat doesn't help; it must be nearly winter by now, but on this side of the Mediterranean, it still feels like the height of summer to him.

Eventually he stumbles across a well-maintained, domed building that he would assume to be another mosque if not for the sign of the cross above its doors. Wondering, and a little dizzy from the heat, he steps inside the open doors.

Within, the air is noticeably cooler, and he hovers uncertainly by the entrance. There's a service in progress in a language that is completely unknown to him, but the general cadence and ritual of the prayers are achingly familiar. The congregants nearly all appear to be native Egyptians. He never expected to find fellow Christians in these Arab lands, worshipping freely. 

Yusuf's voice whispers mockingly in his ear— _You never expected that infidels could live in so civilized a fashion?_ —and the bile rises in his throat. He's been so willfully ignorant, for so long.

He can't bear to remain until the end of the service, to have to face any of these good people, so he slips back out as quietly as he'd entered.

That night, he returns to the same hostel, the same room. Not because he truly expects Yusuf to return, but...what if he does? He might not have been able to find a ship willing to take him on so quickly. What if he should come looking for Nicolò after all, and not find him?

It's a foolish hope, and he knows it. Yusuf does not return. Nicolò doesn't even dream of him.

He finds himself drawn to that church again and again over the next few days, almost in spite of himself. _Seeking absolution?_ Yusuf might ask, with one eyebrow quirked, that mischievous gleam in his eyes. But Nicolò doesn't know if he even believes in that anymore. Does not truly think himself redeemable. What penance could restore the lives he took, undo the horrors he'd witnessed? There is no absolving such as him.

(He had been told that death in battle against the unbelievers at Jerusalem would earn him a place in Heaven. What other lies has he been taught?)

One morning, a deacon spots him lurking outside the doors during an unexpected rainstorm, and calls out a greeting in a language Nicolò does not know. The welcoming tone and gesture are fairly universal, though—he's clearly indicating that Nicolò should come inside and out of the rain.

Inside, the deacon looks him over with a raised eyebrow. Nicolò meets his gaze as best he can, his jaw clenching; direct looks don't often bode well for him in these lands. The deacon is a squat middle-aged Egyptian with thinning black hair and kind brown eyes. "You speak Latin?" he finally asks, his accent curling around the words, and Nicolò nods. "Ah. Christian, yes? I have seen you peeking in here for some days. Sailor?"

Nicolò swallows hard. "Not a sailor."

The deacon's eyes narrow shrewdly, taking in his travel-stained garments, the sheathed sword at his belt. "Pilgrim?"

_Tell me,_ Yusuf demands, _what kind of pilgrim massacres the innocent in the name of God?_

"I swear I mean you no harm," Nicolò says quietly. "I can go."

"Eh." The deacon waves a dismissive hand. "We are all brothers, yes? Be in peace until the rain passes. But I must prepare for the service soon."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Nicolò surprises himself by asking.

So he finds himself straightening up the church in preparation for Mass, scrubbing dirt off the stone floors and assisting in other simple, menial tasks under the deacon's direction. The man eventually introduces himself as Guirguis, and he clearly doesn't _need_ the help, but he's a gregarious fellow who enjoys having someone else to talk to. He slips from Latin into Arabic more than once, and Nicolò realizes he understands more than he doesn't, even if finding the words in that tongue for himself is much more elusive.

"You will stay for Mass, yes?" Guirguis asks once they've finished.

Nicolò hesitates, but shakes his head. 

Guirguis shrugs. "Eh, as you will. I thank you for your assistance." He tilts his head to one side, considering. "You are a helpful man, yes? You come back tomorrow after Mass, maybe I have some more work for you."

"Maybe," Nicolò echoes. He slips away just as the priest emerges into the sanctuary.

All the rest of that day he debates the matter with himself, but in the end, it's not as though he has anything better to do. At some point his money will run out, though, and he'll need to find paying work.

Or...does he, really? For what? Food, lodging? He can survive without. He can survive anything.

It's not a comforting thought. He hugs himself tightly on his narrow cot in the same damn hostel, and when he finally slips into a fitful doze, dreams of the two women in battle. The woman in red shoots arrow after arrow from horseback, until finally one catches her in the throat, and she dies choking.

He doesn't try to sleep again after that. And when the sun is high the next day, he finds himself loitering in the shadows of the church doors as the congregants disperse after Mass.

Guirguis finds him easily enough, his face splitting into a grin. "Ah, the pilgrim returns! Come, brother, we have much to do today."

Today, they are visiting several of the church's elderly parishioners in their homes. Guirguis sets Nicolò to work taking care of various chores around their houses—fixing a broken window shutter, running errands, cooking a simple meal under a querulous old woman's exacting instructions—while Guirguis sits and chats away in rapidfire Arabic. At the end of the afternoon, Guirguis claps Nicolò on the back and says to come back in two days' time, and he might have more work for him.

Nicolò returns to his room that evening feeling satisfied, in a way he hasn't in quite some time. The work was menial, but clearly needed, and he just...likes being helpful. He always has.

Two days later, Guirguis introduces him to one of the other deacons, Samir, an apothecary by trade whose shop is currently shorthanded since his son left to further his studies. He's willing to hire Nicolò on the strength of Guirguis's word alone, even though Nicolò knows absolutely nothing about the preparation of medicines.

"I already have an apprentice, I just need an extra pair of hands to clean the shop and run errands and the like," Samir explains, waving away Nicolò's hesitance. Their shared language is Greek; Samir's is fluent. "Guirguis vouches for you, that's enough for me. Maybe you'll even learn a trick or two."

After the first week, Samir offers Nicolò his son's old room in their house above the shop, as part of his pay. Nicolò slowly uses Greek less and less in conversation, and Arabic more.

Three weeks in, several thieves break into the shop in the dead of night, one armed with a saif, and Nicolò singlehandedly sends them packing. Samir is very grateful, and in return, he does in fact start teaching Nicolò about the medicines he prepares. Nicolò doesn't think he would want to spend all his days at such work, but it's interesting enough for a time.

(For centuries afterward, there will be herbs and medicines he can only name in Arabic.)

And somehow the better part of two years slip away like that in Alexandria.

* * *

He does dream of Yusuf from time to time, but not in the way he dreams of the two warrior women. With the women, it's as though he's peering through a window into their shared life. Those dreams feel _real_ to him, in a way he can't describe except in terms of faith. He believes in these women. They are real, they are living and fighting and dying and living again. Sometimes, he even feels as though they are looking right back at him.

But the dreams of Yusuf...well. Those are definitely _not_ real. He doesn't let himself linger on those dreams.

He still can't bring himself to attend services at the Coptic church.

* * *

The little life he cobbles together for himself in Alexandria comes to an end, predictably enough, when he dies.

It's just an accident. Samir is expecting a shipment to arrive, so Nicolò is sent off to the docks for the day to wait for it. In the meantime, he can earn a little extra coin by helping load and unload cargo from other merchant ships. So he's assisting a Greek crew as they shift the crates being unloaded from the pier to a large oxcart, when he hears shouts from the deck of the ship above him followed by the the distinctive sound of a rope snapping, and he just has the presence of mind to shove the nearest fellow out of harm's way before one of those crates lands squarely on his head.

He's not sure how much time passes before he gasps awake, but it can't have been more than a minute or so. His head aches fiercely. He can _feel_ the broken bones of his skull slowly fusing back together, a uniquely unpleasant sensation, and when he touches the back of his head, his hand comes away tacky with blood. Several of the sailors surround him, and there are a few gasps and muttered oaths as Nicolò slowly drags himself upright. 

"I'm all right," he tells them, wincing. "Was anyone else hurt?"

"Good God, man," one says, awed. "Your skull must be hard as a rock!"

Nicolò makes a show of rubbing his head and grimacing. "It sure doesn't feel that way."

One of the others crouches beside him, helping him to his feet. "That should have cracked your head open like an egg. Are you sure you're all right? That's a lot of blood."

"It's already stopping—see? I must have gotten lucky."

"Lucky," the sailor echoes, the concern in his expression starting to shift into suspicion.

Fortunately, their captain is already shouting for them to get back to work, probably relieved that the accident hadn't killed anyone after all, and Nicolò is able to slip away. He pulls the hood of his cloak up to cover the mess, but he gets more than a few curious looks along the docks as he makes his way back into the city, stopping at a bathhouse to scrub off the blood before eventually returning to Samir's apothecary shop.

He almost thinks he's gotten away with it, until he comes down to work the next morning and sees the look on Samir's face.

"I heard an interesting rumor," Samir says quietly. "It seems there was an accident at the docks yesterday."

Nicolò meets his eyes without flinching. "There was. Fortunately, no one was hurt."

"Hmm. So it would seem." Samir returns to his mortar and pestle, adding, "You should have a physician look at that head of yours."

Nicolò stifles a snort of laughter. "You know, I've been told that before."

But after that, he can feel Samir's eyes on him frequently, thoughtful and concerned. And he gets more than one suspicious look at the marketplace. Not that he hasn't been side-eyed before—even in this very cosmopolitan city, there are mutterings about the new Christian kingdoms being violently established in the Levant. But he's used to that, has learned to ignore it. This feels different. It feels dangerous.

About a week later, Samir and Guirguis sit down to dinner with him and make him a proposition.

"One of our parishioners has a niece who would take the veil," Guirguis explains. "She has chosen to retreat to the White Monastery, to live among the nuns there. Her uncle had planned to make the journey south with her, but urgent business arose that could not wait. Would you be willing to accompany her in his stead? It should be an easy enough journey up the Nile, we've already booked her passage on a riverboat. But a young woman should not travel alone. And I know you can use that sword you carry, though God willing, it should not be necessary."

"The Church will cover your expenses, and compensate you as we would any man hired on in such manner," Samir adds. "This is not charity, it's a real job."

Nicolò glances between them. "You would entrust me with this lady's safety?"

"In a heartbeat," Samir says firmly. "I would not have trusted you in my own home these past two years otherwise." He hesitates, then adds, "And by the time you return, all this nonsense will have blown over, _inshallah_."

And so Nicolò departs some days later, on a sailing boat heading south, accompanying a young woman who intends to become a nun to her new home.

It's a peaceful journey, the felucca skimming gracefully along the river. The girl, Salma, is quiet and contemplative; she's not shy, just very self-contained and sure of herself in a way that Nicolò admires. She finds him a curiosity, this fellow Christian from a foreign land, so highly spoken of by her church's deacons despite never joining them in worship. On their second evening aboard, she asks if he would like to pray with her. He surprises himself by agreeing.

Her prayers are in the Coptic language, which her Church seems to use exclusively in place of the Latin he grew up hearing. She guides him through it, hiding a smile as he stumbles over the alien phrases. And he'd thought Arabic difficult!

For the first time since Jerusalem, he takes true comfort in prayer. Oh, he had prayed, frequently and fervently, in those months traversing the desert with Yusuf; desperate for any sign of grace, any indication of what path he was now meant to tread. And in the privacy of his own room in Alexandria, he did still occasionally pray to a God who felt increasingly distant. But something about the purity of Salma's faith, her obvious joy in it, soothes something deep within him. He does not envy her innocence, but it...lightens his own soul, somehow.

Most of the time, she keeps to her little cabin, and he remains out on the deck with the sailors. They're friendly enough, and treat Salma with respect, which is far more important. But he spends many hours just watching the landscape slip by, thinking on another, earlier journey.

They disembark in the port of Fustat, and memory hits Nicolò like a tangible thing, burrowing into his chest and aching there. He escorts Salma to a women's hostel where she can safely pass the night, then finds himself in front of the building where Yusuf had once secured them a bed. Where they had first discussed their shared dreams of the two warrior women. Where Nicolò had awakened with the intense sense-memory of the women's intimacy to find Yusuf's warm gaze on his face, so near he thought he might almost feel Yusuf's breath against his own cheek. Why had Nicolò never found a way to bridge that gap between them? They had come so close, for a moment or two. And now the distance has become a chasm.

He finds somewhere else to sleep that night.

In the morning, he rejoins Salma, and together they find the second craft that will carry them on her journey. This is a larger merchant's barge, intended for carrying cargo rather than passengers, but Salma's uncle had arranged her a private cabin, and Nicolò certainly doesn't mind bunking with the crew. They aren't the only passengers—the merchant who owns the ship has his family aboard, his wife and two teenage daughters, returning to their home in Upper Egypt after a season visiting relatives here in Fustat. The women adopt Salma immediately, clucking and cooing over her, and she gives Nicolò one wry look before allowing herself to be drawn into their little circle.

This leg of the trip is far slower and longer; Nicolò hadn't quite appreciated just how vast the Nile River truly was. He had some vague notion of its length, seen the fertile delta between Fustat and Alexandria, and knew of its significance to the region. But after several weeks on the barge, he thinks he's starting to grasp how the Egyptian empire had once been the glory of the ancient world. The sheer breadth and beauty of the lands they traverse are staggering to him. He sees creatures he could never have fathomed, birds of more shapes and sizes and colors than he'd dreamed possible. Some of the crewmen tease him for his slack-jawed expression when he sees his first hippopotamus lowing on a riverbank. He doesn't mind. He drinks it all in.

The Nile broadens and deepens as they travel upriver, far wider than any river Nicolò has encountered before. He wonders how long it would take to swim from one bank to the other, assuming one could survive such a crossing. "You should see it in flood season," one sailor remarks, and Nicolò hopes to, one day.

"How much further does it stretch?" he asks.

The sailor laughs again, though not unkindly. " _Much_ further. And you're not even with us as far as the first cataract!"

The merchant's family and most of the crew are Muslim, and pray together on the deck five times each day. Salma sometimes joins them, though she kneels apart and murmurs her own prayers to herself; no one finds this strange. "We all honor the same God," the merchant's wife points out practically. "Why should we not worship Him together?"

It's the first time Nicolò has regularly observed Muslims in prayer since his travels with Yusuf, having lived among the Coptic Christians instead in Alexandria. The familiar rhythm and words tug at him, sweetly aching. He thinks Yusuf would have gotten along famously with the merchant's family, trading jokes with the husband and charming the wife, gently teasing the girls until they blushed. They like Nicolò well enough, he thinks, but they would have _loved_ Yusuf. He feels himself a rather shabby substitute.

In all honesty, he feels superfluous on this journey. Salma has no need of him, save for propriety's sake; the sailors have clearly worked together for many years, and see him as a passenger rather than crewmate. But it gives him a sort of space apart from the world for quiet reflection, and he can appreciate that. He'd done his best to tuck himself away in Alexandria, helpful but unobtrusive, keeping his head down, just existing from day to day. Now, though, something that's been frozen inside of him for the past two years seems to crack, beginning to thaw.

It's not a pleasant sensation.

_The man you were then is the same man you are now,_ Yusuf reminds him. _What that means and how you decide to live with it is up to you._

Nicolò leans against the rail and stares down at the swiftly-coursing waters, and tries not to picture the river running red with all the blood he once shed.

The monastery itself is not on the riverbank; it's some distance to the west, straddling the border between the floodplains and the desert. The barge makes port, such as it is, at a small village so that Salma and Nicolò can disembark. This isn't a usual trading post, but the villagers are always happy to have a merchant ship draw up to their little dock so that they can make small purchases of their own, bartering some fresh vegetables and grilled lamb.

"How do you plan to make your way home, once your duty to the good sister has been discharged?" the merchant asks Nicolò. "There is not much commerce to this place. But we should be passing back downriver in another two months or so, if you'd like us to keep an eye out for you here."

Nicolò honestly hadn't given much thought to his next steps. Vaguely, he supposes he thought the barge might wait for him overnight, but of course even if they did, they're still bound upriver. "Perhaps," he agrees. "If I am still here when you return, I will take you up on that. But do not wait for me if I am not."

The merchant shrugs and clasps his arm in farewell. "It is no hardship. You were a good passenger."

Salma is eager to press onward at once. "I had rest enough on the barge," she tells Nicolò. "I would like to be home."

_Home,_ she calls it, this monastery she has not yet seen, with such absolute surety. Nicolò had met some like her, during his stint in the Church: those with true vocations, who devoted their lives so wholeheartedly to God, radiant in their self-assurance, certain they were exactly where they were meant to be. He'd envied those brothers of his once, longed to find such certainty of purpose for himself. But it always seemed to hover just beyond his grasp.

_How do you plan to make your way home?_ the merchant had asked him, as though that weren't something Nicolò struggled with every minute of every day.

He remembers one conversation he'd had with Yusuf, sitting across the campfire from each other in the cool desert night. Yusuf had asked him about his home in Genova, wondering what he planned to do once he returned there, and Nicolò had responded honestly that he'd never expected to. This was in their early days together, when their truce was still a fragile, sharp-edged thing.

_Why not?_ Yusuf had demanded, abruptly irritable. _Did you intend to take up residence in the Holy Land once you conquered it?_

Nicolò somehow met his gaze without flinching. _No. I expected to die in service to God._

_God was not on that battlefield,_ Yusuf snapped back, his dark eyes glinting like flint.

_No,_ Nicolò had agreed heavily. _He was not. But I died all the same._

As far as anyone in Genova is concerned, Nicolò died at Jerusalem. There is nothing left for him there. He no longer thinks of home as a place. He's not sure what it means to him at all anymore.

The journey on foot from village to monastery is only a matter of hours. When they first glimpse its walls against the backdrop of the desert, it becomes immediately apparent how the White Monastery got its name. The outer walls are all white limestone, and surprisingly massive. This is no modest desert hermitage, as Nicolò had presumed. When he remarks upon this, Salma arches an eyebrow and informs him that in the monastery's heyday, close to four _thousand_ monks and nuns had resided here. That time has since passed—as they draw close, Nicolò can see that some of the outbuildings are in varying states of disuse—but it remains an impressive structure. 

Again and again, Nicolò finds himself embarrassed by his own assumptions. He doesn't blame Yusuf for despairing of him.

They are met at the gate by the hospitaller, who welcomes Salma with a broad smile and sends her off with a novice to meet with the Mother Superior. He's equally gracious toward Nicolò, offering him lodging in their guesthouse for however long he might require it, and invites him to join the brothers for the service that evening.

This time, Nicolò does. He sits in the back and listens to the prayers that should be familiar but aren't, tries to pick out the words that Salma taught him, and eventually just lets his mind drift into something like a meditative state. The thick stone walls keep out the worst of the desert heat, and the air is dry and still. The sonorous murmurs of the monks are soothing, like the sound of waves slapping against the shore. He does not feel any closer to God, but finds that he settles into _himself_ more solidly than he has in many years, and perhaps that's enough, for now.

He decides to remain at the monastery for the two months until he might expect the merchant's barge to return.

It will be closer to five years before he departs.

* * *

When Nicolò looks back on it later, nothing in particular will mark out his time at the White Monastery. He falls easily into the monastic rhythm of life: the scheduled order of prayers, the sense of everything having its place and purpose. Although he need do nothing to earn his narrow cot in the guesthouse, he quickly makes himself useful assisting with various odd jobs around the complex. The monastery is old and sprawling, and there are always repairs to be made, gardens to be tended, general upkeep needed to keep the roofs above their heads. The manual labor keeps his body occupied and mind focused, and he drops onto his cot each night tired but mostly satisfied.

He finds no great purpose for himself there, but does achieve a kind of peace, for a time. He still dreams—of the warrior women, of Jerusalem, of Yusuf—but not so often as before. He feels a distance from the dreams, an objectivity, as though the limestone walls of the monastery hold his own demons at bay along with the rest of the world. He's able to look at himself and what he has done and just...see it for what it is, without judgement.

No one here knows him. The monks and nuns alike respect his silence about both his past and future. Salma visits with him from time to time, usually when he's working in the gardens, and speaks practically about matters within the monastery and news of the outside world. He appreciates her company but never seeks her out himself, content to conduct their quiet friendship entirely on her terms.

He becomes friendly with a handful of the monks as well, those he assists the most often, and at some point he's invited to sit in on lessons with the novices in order to learn to read and write in both Coptic and Arabic. He struggles with both languages equally, but perseveres; it helps that he was already literate in Latin, at least, so he's not truly starting from scratch like some of the younger novices. Though they certainly have the advantage when it comes to fluency in the spoken tongues.

So time passes. And one morning, for no particular reason, while crossing the courtyard from the guesthouse to the kitchens, he looks up at the thick walls that have encircled him every day for the past five years and thinks: _enough_.

Perhaps once he might have believed he could achieve penance in solitude, devoting his life to God in atonement for the lives he's taken. But he doesn't think this gift of invincibility was meant to be wasted in self-centered contemplation. He knows he's been doing some small good here, but there is so much more he is able to give. Whatever purpose there is to his immortality, he will not find it by shutting himself away.

The warrior women ride across vast plains in his dreams, drawn inexorably onward, and he can no longer be content just sitting still.

So he retrieves his sword in its battered sheath from beneath his cot, makes his grateful farewells to the monks and to Salma, and steps back out into the larger world.


	5. time unfolds the petals for our eyes to see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: slightly more traumatic deaths than usual in this chapter, still nothing graphic.

Upon their arrival to Baghdad, Quỳnh dies from a blow to the head in the midst of a fucking riot in the marketplace.

She _knew_ heading west was a bad idea.

She gasps back to life to find herself in a narrow alleyway, slung over a complete stranger's broad shoulder, and immediately starts kicking her way free of his grasp, hissing as she goes for the knives strapped to her ankles. He releases her promptly. "Peace!" he says in Arabic, taking a few hasty steps clear of her, then repeats the word in several other languages, settling at last into Greek. "I mean you no harm! Andromache didn't want anyone to see you revive."

Andromache's name cuts through Quỳnh's blind rage. She settles into a battle stance, knives braced, and looks this stranger over narrowly. It only takes an instant to place him. "Oh! _You!_ "

"Me," one of the new immortals from her dreams agrees wryly. "It's good to finally meet you, I think. My name is Nicolò. I apologize if I frightened you."

Quỳnh scoffs at the notion that anything in this world could possibly frighten her. She'd been caught off guard, that's all. "No matter," she says briskly, tucking her knives back into their sheaths. "You're just lucky I didn't slit your throat for it."

One shoulder lifts in a shrug. "I've had worse."

"You're learning, then." Quỳnh allows him a sliver of a smile. "Good. I'm Quỳnh."

The corners of his lips twitch in return. In the fifteen or so years this man has haunted her dreams, she could probably count on one hand the times she's ever truly seen him smile. They'll have to work on that.

Andromache rejoins them moments later, panting a little from the heat and exertion. "Soldiers have dispersed the crowd," she says, giving Quỳnh a quick kiss before gesturing for them to follow her. "Made a fucking mess of it, too. Since when did Baghdad get so tense? Last time we passed through, it was flourishing. Arts, sciences, education..."

"That was two centuries ago," Quỳnh points out as they make their way through the labyrinthine alleyways.

"The House of Wisdom is still of great renown," Nicolò says with a sigh. "But the Abbasids and Fatimids and Seljuks have all been playing tug of war over the city for at least as long as I've been here, and they each have their own supporters in the streets."

Andromache hums thoughtfully. "Is that what brought you here?" They've often been drawn to areas of conflict, of civil unrest; places where they can try to do some good.

"No. I came here to study."

Quỳnh exchanges a bemused glance with her beloved. "Study?"

"Medicine," Nicolò explains, a little ruefully. He glances down at his sheathed sword. "I thought learning the healing arts might balance the scales a little, in exchange for the lives I take. Well, it was a nice idea, anyway."

"Huh." A few of Quỳnh's more recent dreams are making a lot more sense now. "How is that going?"

Nicolò shrugs. "I still have much to learn. But it seems I have the time for it."

"Well, we were just glad you finally decided to hold still for more than five minutes," Andromache says drily. "And that you picked somewhere recognizable. You've led us on a merry chase these past fifteen years, kid."

Nicolò is quiet for a moment, considering them. "So the dreams really do go both ways."

"You got it. They only stop once we meet." Andromache reaches the end of the alley, braces herself against a wall and glances out to the next open avenue. "Let's get someplace private, and we'll talk."

* * *

As it turns out, Nicolò rents a private room in the students' quarter, not far from the House of Wisdom, and he has no objection to hosting them there. Quỳnh hopes this bodes well for their future together.

"You've been remarkably unfazed by our arrival," she tells him, settling onto the cushions he's laid out on the floor for them. The room is small and simple, but he's made it comfortable enough. It's also pleasantly quiet, with a single window looking out into the shared courtyard between several similar buildings.

Nicolò joins them on the floor with a jug of wine and a few cups. "I've always believed you must be real, from my dreams," he says. "They just felt...true to me. I knew there had to be a purpose to them. I just had no idea how to begin to seek you out."

Andromache accepts her cup of wine gratefully. "There's an art to it. And it's damn near impossible unless you recognize something in the background. When I first dreamed of Quỳnh…" She trails off, and Quỳnh gives her a reassuring smile. She had been the first, after all. It had been entirely new to both of them then. "Anyway. You were in Alexandria for a while early on, that I know, but we were halfway across the world and in the middle of a job we couldn't just abandon. By the time we started heading in your general direction, you'd moved on, and not anywhere either of us recognized. Some kind of monastery, maybe?"

"Yes," Nicolò says softly, his gaze turning inward. "For a time."

"Those dreams were very boring," Quỳnh informs him. "And we got tangled up with some Khitan raiders, so that set us back a year or two as well."

"We apparently missed our window of opportunity, though," Andromache continues. "Because after that, you were all over the damn place. You made it further upriver on the Nile than we've gone in ages. And then there was a lot of faffing about in the desert, a few more cities, _Mecca_ I think…?"

"I accidentally joined a Hajj caravan when I was aiming for Baghdad. Mecca was unexpected for me as well."

Andromache snorts. "So, yeah, you didn't exactly make it easy for us. And the other one hasn't been much better, though at least I'm pretty sure _he's_ been sticking to the Mediterranean."

Nicolò's head comes up like a startled horse. "Yusuf? You've seen Yusuf?"

_Yusuf_ , Quỳnh thinks, setting the name into her memory. "Yes, we dream of him as well," she says. "I suppose you don't, do you? Since you've already met? It was very confusing for us at first—there have never been two at the same time before. We couldn't figure out which of you was the new immortal, until we realized you _both_ must be."

"Yes, we killed each other," Nicolò says distractedly. "But you still dream of him? What..." He swallows. "How...I mean, is he well? Is he happy?"

Admittedly, Quỳnh has only known Nicolò for the space of an hour or two, apart from the flashes she's glimpsed in fifteen years' worth of dreams. But his expression now is entirely new to her. It's as if a flame has been lit somewhere deep within him, and it shines out of his eyes, softening every line of his face.

"He looks well enough, from what we've seen," Andromache says calmly. If she notices the transformation of his mien, she makes no comment. "He got restless at about the same time you did; he'd stayed in one port city for a while, though neither of us recognized it. But around when you left the monastery, he got back on a boat and hasn't been able to keep still since."

Nicolò smiles softly. "He had been a merchant, before I knew him. He must have returned to his family's trade."

"That would explain it." Quỳnh sips her wine, exchanging a look with Andromache over the rim of her cup. Andromache nods. "Well, now that we've found you, I'm sure it will be easier to track Yusuf down."

"No," Nicolò says at once, eyes widening. "That's not...we should leave him be. If he's happy. He only ever wanted to return home to his family."

This time, the look they share goes on long enough that Nicolò's brow furrows in concern. "Nicolò," Quỳnh finally says. "You understand that you are immortal, yes? When you die, you revive; when you are injured, it heals. You will outlive everyone else you have ever known."

Nicolò hugs his knees to his chest. He looks to have been about thirty when he first died, which makes him in his mid-forties now. Only a baby, still, as Quỳnh and Andromache reckon it. "Yes, I understand that. I have no desire to return to the life I led before Jerusalem. But Yusuf has a family he loves, a life he cherishes. He's a good man. He deserves to have that. If we really do live forever, why begrudge him this time with his family, so long as he has them? What difference does it make?"

"And when they realize that he's not aging?" Andromache presses. "When they see him heal after some accident, or worse, from a death? What do you imagine might become of him then?"

From the shadows in Nicolò's eyes, he's already had his own taste of such consequences. "He's a good man," he repeats firmly. "And...you'll both continue to dream of him, yes? So long as you don't meet him?" When Andromache nods, he goes on quickly, "Then if any ill should befall him, you'll see it. We can find him then." He looks down at his clasped hands. "I know the city where his family resides, I'll be able to help you track him if it should become necessary. But please, Andromache, Quỳnh...if you ever want him to join us, it must be willingly. It must be because he chooses it, as I do." He swallows hard, and adds in a low tone, "I would not force my company upon him."

Eventually, Andromache sighs and inclines her head. "All right. We'll leave him be, for now." She smiles wryly at Quỳnh. "It certainly won't be the longest one of us has gone alone."

"He's not alone," Nicolò murmurs. "He won't be."

They retire soon after that, Nicolò to his narrow bed, Quỳnh and Andromache settling into the nest of cushions on the floor. It's quite cozy, Quỳnh thinks approvingly, curling into the circle of Andromache's arms.

"How long did we dream of the two of them together, do you think?" Quỳnh wonders, keeping her voice low enough that only Andromache can hear. "A few months? Not a full year."

"Definitely not a year," Andromache agrees. "And they won't have been sharing each other's dreams, either, since then."

"Yusuf seems to have left quite an impression on him after only a few months."

Andromache presses a kiss to the back of Quỳnh's neck. "No kidding. Well, we'll see how long he manages to hold out."

"For fifteen years, he could have gone after him, if he really does know where Yusuf's family lives. But he didn't."

"No," Andromache says thoughtfully. "He didn't. But men are very stupid, sometimes."

Quỳnh grins and rolls over to kiss her properly, not caring in the slightest if Nicolò should notice. He's been sharing their dreams for fifteen years already; he's definitely seen worse by now.

* * *

They remain in Baghdad for several months, so that Nicolò can complete his course of study. "It's just a beginning," he says with a shrug. "No one would consider me a physician yet. But at least I'll be able to patch up most injuries."

He is very much on board with Andromache's general philosophy of roaming the world and fighting on behalf of those who need it, though he does have some questions.

"How do you decide which causes are just? Which side of a battle has the right of it?" he asks them, very seriously, not long after they first meet.

Andromache and Quỳnh exchange looks. "It's rarely so cut and dried as that," Andromache says with a sigh. "We try not to think of it in terms of taking sides, for the most part. I'm less concerned with empires and crowns, and more with the common folk who just happen to get in the way. They tend to need protection from both sides of a war."

This seems to resonate with Nicolò, who sits quietly for the rest of that evening, deep in thought.

"Sometimes, though," he finally says, as much to himself as to them, "there _is_ a clear right and wrong."

Quỳnh remembers one of her earliest dreams of this man, standing wild-eyed and horrified in the midst of a bloody massacre, and reaches out to clasp his shoulder in reassurance. He flinches at first, then leans into her touch, ever so slightly.

"Like calming a skittish horse," Quỳnh remarks to Andromache later. "Was I like this when you first met me?" Lykon certainly hadn't been—he had all the exuberance of an overgrown puppy, free and easy with his laughter and affection. Nicolò is friendly enough, and kind, but very self-contained.

Andromache tilts her head, considering it. "You had your moments. But you were more like a feral cat, scratching and biting—"

Quỳnh hisses and tackles her into the cushions, which probably just proves Andromache's point.

* * *

It's a matter of some debate where to head next after Baghdad. Quỳnh thinks that Nicolò has spent quite enough of his time in deserts, and proposes following the maritime trade route southeast into India. Andromache counters that they've been avoiding Europe for long enough already, especially if Christendom has begun waging holy wars against its neighbors; they'll have plenty of work to do in the north. Nicolò clearly has no desire to return to the Levant, but seems torn between eagerness to see more of the world and a reluctance to stray too far from the Mediterranean, where Yusuf still sails through Quỳnh's dreams.

"Byzantium, then, to start with," Andromache suggests. "We'll just take a more roundabout route to get there, keep to the east until we reach the Black Sea. It's not like we're in a rush." She pats Quỳnh's hand consolingly. "I know it means more desert than you'd like, but in fairness, that's true in any direction from here."

Quỳnh scowls. "You _had_ to pick Baghdad," she snipes at Nicolò. "Was there really nowhere else in the world that could teach you how to sew up wounds?"

Nicolò just shakes his head, smiling in his subtle fashion.

On the plus side, this means they'll have months alone together on the road, years even if they take their time about it or get sidetracked. (They _always_ get sidetracked, somehow.) That's plenty of time to learn more about one another, without the distractions of jobs or battle, and discover how they will fit together going forward.

It's been more than a hundred years since they lost Lykon, since it's just been Andromache and Quỳnh alone together again. There's bound to be a period of adjustment.

Unlike Lykon, who'd immediately shifted the dynamics of their little group by sheer force of personality, Nicolò slots in more unobtrusively, content to hold back and observe rather than insert himself. He's a quiet, steady presence at their backs as they ride, ever watchful.

The first time Quỳnh sees him fight in earnest is a week or so out from Baghdad, when they're set upon by a gang of overly optimistic bandits. Nicolò is somehow the first to spot their approach—a fact which deeply galls Andromache afterward—and he kicks his mount forward into a gallop immediately to cut them off. He's a bit awkward fighting on horseback, but there's no question that he knows how to wield the battered sword he carries. Quỳnh picks off the other bandits with arrows while Nicolò tangles with their leader; the whole fight is over in less than ten minutes.

"We need to work on your mounted combat," is the first thing Andromache tells him, once it's done. She'd held back to observe him, though ready to step in should the fight have gone badly. "Can you use any weapons besides that ugly thing?"

Nicolò cocks an eyebrow as he cleans his blade. "I used to be a fair shot with a crossbow. But I haven't had one of my own since Jerusalem." He's eying Quỳnh's lovely little recurve bow in a manner she might even call covetous, a first for their modest Nicolò.

As it turns out, Nicolò is more than a fair shot. He has patience and an excellent eye, key qualities for any archer, and quickly picks up the trick of shooting from horseback. His swordsmanship, by contrast, is utilitarian but effective enough; it takes much longer to train him out of holding himself back when they spar.

"You can't hurt me," Andromache tells him flatly, after disarming him for roughly the hundredth time that morning. Quỳnh watches from the shade of their tent. "I've been fighting far stronger warriors than you for literally thousands of years, and even if you somehow get lucky, it'll heal. So would you at least _try_ to land a blow?" She points with her labrys. "Now pick up your sword and let's do this properly."

Nicolò goes very still, the corner of his mouth twisting ruefully. "You sound just like Yusuf."

"Well, you should have listened to him," Andromache retorts. "Let's go."

Later, when it's Quỳnh's turn with him, she asks, "Is it because we're female?"

Nicolò just barely ducks in time to keep her from taking his head off. He's panting with exertion. That sword of his is heavy, requiring a two-handed grip; Quỳnh vastly prefers her slender twin blades. "I'd like to say no," he manages between blows. "But it does go against all I've been taught, to take up arms against a woman." She slices a cut across his chest which bleeds freely for a moment, and he grimaces as it seals itself closed. "I'm getting over it, though, I promise you."

In fairness, they do have millennia of experience over him, and he's doing about as well as could be expected. He defers to their judgement without hesitation, rare among men, and Quỳnh has to admit that she's more at ease with Nicolò than with those warriors she's met with stronger inclinations toward violence.

"There is an art to combat that I can find appealing," he admits to Quỳnh one evening, when Andromache is off alone hunting for their supper. They're sitting side by side in front of their campfire. "The physicality of it, the grace with which you and Andromache move—there is such beauty in that. But I take no pleasure in bloodshed. I do understand it can be necessary, to protect those who cannot defend themselves, and this gift we share…" Nicolò shakes his head, a little wistfully. "We are not meant for lives of peace, are we?"

"We are not _meant_ for anything in particular," Quỳnh says. "We could live as gods, I suppose. Tyrants, invincible and terrible. But that has never sounded particularly fulfilling to me." She gives Nicolò a smile. "We've been lucky so far. Imagine if this immortality had befallen a Caligula instead!"

Nicolò shudders, shaking his head. "I'd prefer not to. But you still don't think there's a greater purpose at work, in this? Even after all you've seen and done?"

"Do you somehow think your God has chosen you, in particular?"

"I can't imagine why He would have," Nicolò sighs. "I've struggled all my life to be worthy of Him, with little success. In Jerusalem…" His eyes darken, gaze going distant. "I thought this immortality proof that I was barred from Heaven in truth. And deservedly so." He visibly shakes himself out of that memory, looking at Quỳnh beside him. "You said _your God_. Who do you pray to, then?"

"I don't anymore." Quỳnh leans back on her elbows with a sly smile. "Well, not like that, anyway. Did you know Andromache was once worshipped as a god? She can certainly bring _me_ to my knees."

It actually startles a laugh out of him, though he flushes a little. "I should be appalled at your heresy, but I suppose that _is_ a sort of worship."

He's handsomer when he smiles, she muses. And it's been a while, and she knows Andromache would have no objection, so she offers: "You could join us sometime, if you'd like."

That sobers him quickly. He ducks his head down, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Uh, that's...I don't think...I'm sorry, I thought that you and Andromache were…?"

"We are," she says, her own smile widening. Nicolò is very cute when he's flustered. "Our love is as sure as the dawn and constant as the tides. That doesn't mean we can't have a little fun from time to time. Don't worry, Nicolò, I would not have offered if there were even the slightest chance you might come between us." Hearing her own words, she amends, "Well, _physically_ , of course, that would be welcome."

Nicolò's cheeks are very pink by now. "That's very kind of you," he manages. "I thank you for the offer, but I'm not…"

"It's perfectly all right if you're not interested," she says reassuringly. "I take no offense. It was just a thought. This won't change anything between the three of us either way, I promise."

"All right. That's...good."

Quỳnh cocks her head to one side, considering. She's never seen him slip away with anyone, in the year and more they've now known each other, nor does she recall dreaming of him in any such situations. "Out of curiosity, is it just that you're not interested in _us_ , or are you not…" She waves an expressive hand. "...in general?"

"I was a monk once, you know," he replies. "And very nearly a priest."

She raises her eyebrows. "I hadn't known that, no, but that's not an answer. It's all fine, you understand. Even if you never…"

"I have," he sighs. "It's just…" He scrubs a hand across his face. "I'm not interested in _women_ , in general."

Quỳnh shrugs. "I'm not interested in men, in general, but Andromache sometimes is, and I don't mind the occasional exception." She shuffles closer, so that she can nudge his shoulder with her own. "Did you really think _we_ would judge you for it? Of all people?"

It gets a faint smile out of him. "I suppose not. But there's a reason I went into the Church in the first place, once it became clear that marriage was...not for me."

She grins wickedly at that. "A time-honored tradition amongst you Christians, from what I've witnessed. I've seduced a nun or two in my time. Were there any handsome men in that monastery of yours?"

"In Genova, yes, several," he admits wryly. "But if you mean the one in Egypt...no. I don't know. My mind was too full of...other matters." He shrugs, staring into the fire. "It's honestly not something I care much about anymore."

But there's a certain wistfulness to his tone, and she refrains from prying any further.

Ironically, that very night, she dreams of Yusuf tumbling a pretty young man into silk sheets, and she and Andromache both wake gasping and needy with the aftershocks of it. They don't tell Nicolò about _those_ dreams. But Quỳnh thinks of the man they'd glimpsed in Yusuf's bed—pale-skinned and blue-eyed—and wonders if perhaps these two entered immortality as a matched set in more ways than one.

* * *

Their first real job together as a trio goes disastrously wrong.

It's no one's fault, just shitty circumstances. Borders between kingdoms have always been a rather theoretical concept to Quỳnh, shifting as they do seemingly without warning, and they haven't been anywhere near the Black Sea in well over a century. Apparently the Seljuks have been expanding in this direction as well, and are currently engaged in a protracted series of skirmishes with the Kingdom of Georgia over territory that was probably Byzantine the last time Quỳnh and Andromache were here. A wealthy merchant is anxious to retrieve his family from a besieged town, and hires Andromache to extract them. Nicolò actually bristles at the thought of taking any money from a desperate man, but Andromache points out that most of it will probably go towards bribing various soldiers to get themselves in and out of the town walls.

The retrieval itself goes perfectly. They just have abysmally poor timing, because as they're within the town with the merchant's wife and teenaged daughter, waiting for night to fall so that they can slip back out again, the rest of the Georgian army begins its attack in earnest and succeeds in breaching the walls.

Nicolò is the first of them to die, trying to bar the door to the merchant's home. He receives a mace to the head for his troubles, an ugly, messy death. The daughter screams and can't seem to stop, though her mother does her best to calm her. Quỳnh and Andromache exchange a grim look and raise their weapons as one.

By the time Nicolò revives, face still covered in blood, they've dispatched several more soldiers between them but the roof of the house has been set alight. The three immortals all but drag their charges out into the streets, where they find chaos. It's all they can do to keep together and press forward.

Bribes mean nothing at this point; it's just a matter of surviving the night. They don't, but so long as their charges do, Quỳnh hopes they can still eke out a win. Andromache is the next to die, which is unusual, but again: shit luck all around. When she revives enough to yank the sword out of her chest, Quỳnh has already gotten caught up in the mob of terrified civilians, and only manages to avoid being trampled when Nicolò leaps into the fray. He hooks his arms around her waist and literally tosses her out of the crowd, then grimly clears a path for them by swinging about with a blunt staff he picked up somewhere. Half the town is aflame by then. Andromache grabs the mother, Quỳnh the daughter, and they bodily drag them through a gap between buildings that's hardly wide enough to be called an alley. Quỳnh looks back only once. There's no sign of Nicolò. They have no choice but to keep moving anyway.

Somehow they manage to evade the Georgian soldiers as they escape the town via a sewage drain, only to find both armies actively battling it out in the fields outside the town walls. Quỳnh honestly isn't sure how they keep the two civilians alive through the night, but they do. It takes several more days to reunite the family, and once they do, they have to turn right back around to hunt for Nicolò.

It takes them the better part of two weeks to track him down. He'd managed to help a group of refugees flee beyond Seljuk lines, then was promptly captured and executed by the Seljuk forces for the crime of looking like a Byzantine spy (since the Seljuks are _also_ engaged in a protracted war with Byzantium). When that didn't stick, they'd executed him twice more and then finally buried him alive in a mass grave, where he spent days suffocating each time he revived, unable to dig his way free until Andromache and Quỳnh finally unearth him.

That sort of trauma tends to linger. He can't bear enclosed spaces for a while after that, so they keep to the open road for years, avoiding cities, camping out under the stars. They get into the habit of sleeping pressed closer together as a trio, Nicolò's back against either Andromache's or Quỳnh's, granting him the reassurance of their touch without feeling pent in. At first Andromache takes a few solo jobs to keep them in coin, but before too long Nicolò insists on accompanying her, and they return to their work. Their Georgian misadventure doesn't seem to have had any affect on his combat skills, at least; if anything, he returns to sparring with dogged determination, and no longer holds any part of himself back.

Time passes. Nicolò no longer flinches when caught amongst a crowd. The shadows behind his eyes retreat. They continue letting the wind blow them where it will, and talk, and laugh, and fight. And Quỳnh readjusts her concept of _family_ to firmly include their new brother.

* * *

Not all the jobs they take are as dramatic as Nicolò's unfortunate first. They've long since found that when they have no particular destination in mind, the easiest way to earn coin is by serving as escort to travellers, either wealthy individuals or larger caravans.

"You know, the first paid work Yusuf and I took as immortals was as caravan guards," Nicolò remarks once, that little smile tugging at his lips. He always appears freer, somehow, on the rare occasions he speaks of Yusuf. "I could hardly string a full sentence together in Arabic, then, but he did enough talking for the both of us. That man could make a friend of anyone."

"So we hear," Andromache says drily.

With the Christians continuing to grab at cities in the so-called Holy Land, there's been a corresponding upheaval in the usual trade patterns around that region. The annual Hajj caravans out of north Africa have gotten very creative in rerouting around the Levant, for one; there are also new trade routes being traced between the major cities of Persia and Byzantium. So it is that they find themselves back in Baghdad some ten years after first meeting Nicolò, having just escorted a caravan there all the way from Constantinople.

Word of mouth earns them their next job: some Abbasid lordling has decided to make the Hajj with his entire household, and prefers to hire on his own guards rather than join in the rabble of one of the larger caravans. He's an eccentric who doesn't care that these foreign fighters aren't Muslim themselves; he says he actually prefers it, since they'll be able to focus on doing their jobs rather than on the pilgrimage itself.

The pay is good enough to overrule Quỳnh's antipathy toward deserts. And they definitely earn it—all the roads to Mecca are well-traveled, and there will always be bandits and Bedouin raiders tempted by a plump target such as they present. Fortunately, ten years together have gone a long way toward integrating Nicolò into Andromache and Quỳnh's long-established battle rhythms, and they easily dispatch any foes they encounter. Such attacks are infrequent, but Quỳnh finds them deeply satisfying. It's nice to have clearly defined enemies from time to time.

Nicolò often offers to take part of the night watch alone, so that Quỳnh and Andromache can have some private time together in the tent all three of them share; it's a pleasant enough journey, despite the heat and sand. And they befriend certain members of the entourage, those of less rarified social class.

Among these is the lordling's personal physician, a good-looking fellow with an incongruously Norman name who clearly has his eye on Nicolò. He goes out of his way to ride alongside him, chattering away, making double entendres in a mixture of Latin, Greek, and Arabic. Quỳnh finds it absolutely hilarious, all the more so since Nicolò is either genuinely oblivious to his overtures or deliberately playing dumb. Nicolò seems far more interested in hearing about Robert's medical studies in Baghdad than in his flirtations, but Robert willingly seizes upon the perceived opening, and turns out to be an engaging tutor in the subject.

"He does seem clever, in his own way," Quỳnh teases Nicolò late one night, while all three immortals are on watch together. "All that knowledge of anatomy—you could do far worse!"

Nicolò just shakes his head in quiet laughter. "My interest in his anatomy is purely academic, I promise you."

"I wouldn't mind giving him a tumble, if you don't want him," Andromache offers with a wink. "He's pretty enough."

"Hey!"

Andromache grins and kisses away Quỳnh's pout. "Don't fret, my dear, you're still the prettiest."

The only reason Robert the physician sticks out in Quỳnh's memory at all is because of his book. He has a finely bound medical tome that he carries in his pack at all times, with detailed anatomical diagrams and extensive notes on various ailments and how to treat them, and Nicolò finds it fascinating. "I only studied basic battlefield medicine," he points out. "I still have a great deal to learn." And Robert, of course, is more than happy to tutor him.

The man is also a compulsive notekeeper, so he keeps loose pages of his own scribblings along with personal correspondence and other mementos tucked every which way into the thick book. This means that when an inconvenient wind picks up one evening, they all jump to catch at the loose pages before they should be lost to the sands—or, worse, the campfire. Robert thanks them, chiding himself laughingly for his own bad habits.

"Are you an artist as well?" Andromache asks with a raised eyebrow, passing over the page she retrieved.

Robert glances down at it and grins. "No, not I. This was a gift from an old...friend."

_Lover_ , Quỳnh mouths behind his back. But Andromache doesn't laugh as expected. There's an odd look in her eyes, one Quỳnh can't quite place at first. Then Robert holds the sketch up to the light from the fire to show it off.

"A self-portrait of the artist." He gives Quỳnh and Nicolò a wink. "Handsome, no?"

Even if Quỳnh didn't recognize the portrait from her own dreams, she would have known from the sudden stiffness of Nicolò's shoulders, his sharp intake of breath.

"Very," Quỳnh says. "But maybe you should tuck that precious book of yours away for the evening, hmm? The wind seems to be rising."

Robert shrugs and does so, and Nicolò excuses himself to go speak with the caravan driver about tomorrow's route. By the time he returns, of course, Robert and the other members of the lordling's entourage have retired to their tents for the night. From where she's comfortably tucked into the warm circle of Andromache's arm, Quỳnh watches Nicolò move restlessly around the fire, fussing with their own little tent and bedrolls, until finally he exhales audibly and drops down to the ground opposite them.

"I'm not going mad, am I?" he says in a strained voice. "That drawing, that was Yusuf?"

"Sure looked like him," Andromache agrees.

"Sometimes," Quỳnh adds softly, "the world is not quite so large as it seems."

Nicolò huffs out a laugh. He stares into the fire, the flames bringing out flecks of gold in his pale eyes. Sometimes Quỳnh imagines she can see a sort of kinship between him and Andromache, in their pale skin and dark brown hair, in the shifting sea-glass of their eyes. The broad strokes of their features are drawn quite differently, but the general coloring is the same, as is a certain reserve in their demeanors, a restrained strength. They've already posed as brother and sister once, for a job. Quỳnh suspects they will do so again on many occasions to come.

"I didn't even know he was an artist," Nicolò murmurs.

Andromache shrugs. "You were fleeing a war at the time. I'm not surprised it never came up."

"It's strange," he says quietly, "how much you can know and yet not know another person." He lifts his gaze to theirs, and Quỳnh hasn't quite learned how to interpret this particular expression. "Have you dreamed of him recently?"

He so rarely asks. "For me, the last was a week or so ago," Quỳnh says. "Nothing remarkable. He was alone in a room, with a book. There was a bowl of figs on the table beside him. A window was open; I could smell the sea."

She dreams him in that room more often than not, lately. Now that she thinks on it, she can't recall when last she dreamed of Yusuf on a ship. He seems to have settled for a time. She doesn't know where, just that it's near the sea, as he always seems to be.

"Does he seem happy?"

Andromache sighs. "You know we have no way of answering that—"

Quỳnh wraps her hand around Andromache's knee and squeezes, hard, to silence her. "He seems...solitary," she tells Nicolò. "In a way he did not used to."

For long minutes, Nicolò just looks at her, his gaze unreadable. Finally he nods to himself and gets to his feet. "Wake me for the second watch," he says, and retreats to his bedroll without another word.

He doesn't bring up Yusuf again for the remainder of the journey to Mecca, and although he's as alert and helpful as ever in his duties, he seems to withdraw within himself more. He's quieter, engages less frequently with their companions, his gaze distant. At some point he must directly rebuff Robert's advances, because the physician leaves him be from then on, though he takes the rejection well and remains on friendly terms with the rest of them.

"It's a pity Nicolò _didn't_ fuck him," Andromache remarks. "Might have worked out some of...whatever it is that's got him wound up so tightly."

Quỳnh rolls her eyes. "You know what it is."

"I am choosing to neither know nor care."

But she doesn't mean it, so Quỳnh just nudges her fondly and changes the subject.

When they reach Mecca, Nicolò pulls Quỳnh and Andromache aside. "I'm not going to be returning with you to Baghdad," he tells them quietly. "I've already spoken with our employer about it, it won't affect your pay for the return trip."

Andromache raises an eyebrow. "And where will you be instead?"

"I don't know. I just...need some time on my own, I think. A year or so, maybe?" He looks between them uncertainly. "Is that all right?"

"We're not shackled to one another," Quỳnh says tartly. "You're free to go where you please. We all are." But she can't help but soften at the pleading expression in his eyes. "Take care of yourself, hmm?"

"I'll try." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, uncharacteristically fidgety. "How will I find you again?"

Andromache studies him for a long moment, then looks at Quỳnh, who shrugs. "Constantinople," she finally suggests. "Call it a year and a half; we'll aim to be there next winter. But have a care, Nicolò. We won't dream of you, now that we've met, so we won't have any way of knowing if you get into trouble."

Nicolò offers her a tiny smile. "You know me better than that by now, Andromache."

"That's why I'm warning you."

They enjoy one last night together as a trio, dining out on the coin they've earned from the first half of the caravan job and retiring to a room together in a crowded inn. There's only one large bed—not an uncommon state of affairs, in cities such as this—and they share it easily, the women curling up tightly together with Quỳnh in the middle, Nicolò lying on her other side. She reaches behind herself blindly to clutch his hip, squeezing gently, and he covers her hand with his own broad one for a moment. Then she sighs and snuggles into Andromache's chest, feeling Nicolò's back warm against hers, and sleeps soundly all night without dreaming.

In the morning, he sets out alone in the direction of the Red Sea, leaving Quỳnh and Andromache to cool their heels for however many days the Hajj itself will take in this holiest of cities.

"It will be nice to have you all to myself for a while," Quỳnh tells her with a kiss. "But I do think I'll miss him."

Andromache glances down at her wryly. "Well, enjoy the peace while it lasts, because unless I miss my guess, we're going to have _two_ of them to deal with by the time we get to Constantinople."

Quỳnh grins. "Yes, I look forward to finally meeting Yusuf as well."

It's about damn time.


	6. strange how certain the journey

It takes Nicolò a long time to admit to himself where he's going.

He begins by retracing his steps, in a manner of speaking. He makes his way to the town of Jidda, where one can always find passage to any other port on the vast Red Sea. There is an entire industry built up around the Hajj calendar, a whole fleet of boats of all shapes and sizes waiting to ferry returning pilgrims back home from the holy city. He's a week or so early, the rites still in full swing in Mecca, but without having a strict destination in mind, he's willing to barter himself passage on the first northbound ship he can find.

The winds aren't very favorable, so it's a slow voyage following the coast north. Nicolò doesn't mind. He helps the crew with simple duties on deck and spends most of his time staring out at the waves, allowing his thoughts to slip along like seafoam. He thinks of Andromache and Quỳnh, riding and laughing together, pressing warmly against one another in the nights, the soft, private sounds he could never help overhearing. He remembers Quỳnh's one time offer, so early on in their acquaintance; sometimes he wonders what would have happened if he'd taken her up on it. He never regrets his choice, though. The pair of them are perfect just as they are.

He sleeps on the deck, wrapped in his own cloak, and imagines the warmth of his friends curled up at his back on cold nights. The uncomplicated affection that had grown between them. Nicolò has been solitary for so much of his long life; these two women have become more like sisters to him than his own siblings ever had been. He will genuinely miss them until they meet again.

But being left alone to the silence of his own mind is a relief in its own way. He doesn't need to explain himself or answer to anyone; there are no prodding elbows or teasing glances. It's nice not to be the focus of anyone's attention for a while.

Eventually he disembarks at a port town at the northern tip of the Red Sea, and lingers there for a time, taking on odd jobs, until he can get hired on with a caravan to cross the strip of desert to Cairo. It's an unremarkable journey. He wonders if he's retreading any of the same ground that he and Yusuf had crossed, a full quarter of a century ago now, with Mustafa's caravan. He wonders whatever became of Mustafa, or that other guard of his—what was his name? Nicolò can't remember. He'd saved the man's life once, intercepting what would have been a killing blow and nearly revealing his own secret in the process, and he can't remember his name.

But he remembers the intent look on Yusuf's face as he bandaged Nicolò's arm to cover up where the wound should have been. The way his brows had drawn together in concentration, the concern in his warm brown eyes. The steadiness in his hands. The heat sparked by his touch, just the barest brush of his fingertips against Nicolò's skin. He'd wanted…he can't even put a name to it exactly, but oh, how he'd _wanted_.

The caravan reaches Cairo. Nicolò doesn't let himself look south toward Fustat. He follows the Nile north instead.

This time he goes on foot, not by boat. It's slow progress. He doesn't care. He has nowhere to be and no one expecting him. He still has plenty of time before Constantinople.

The Nile is just as beautiful from its banks. He thinks if he had only one mortal life to live, he might happily spend it on one of those graceful feluccas, skimming endlessly up and down this great river, watching the landscape change. He would travel upriver beyond the first and second and third cataracts, deep into the heart of this continent, finally explore the source of the Nile and the lands beyond. Andromache and Quỳnh have gone there, they told him, a thousand years ago or more. When it was still just the two of them, before Nicolò, even before Lykon.

(He's learned of Lykon by now: their youngest companion once, yet the first of all of them to die for good. They still grieve him deeply, though it's only visible if you know how to look for it. Nicolò takes a certain comfort in knowing that even immortality has its limits. That he, too, will be able to rest, someday.)

It's late autumn by the time he reaches Alexandria, though that just means it's slightly cooler than usual, and might actually rain from time to time. But the Mediterranean can be fickle in this season, and there are fewer ships willing to sail. He drifts through the city like a ghost, keeping his hood up and face half-covered. The streets have changed in subtle ways since he lived here. The Coptic church is still much the same, though, standing as it has for centuries. He doesn't look for Guirguis or Samir; they would be old men by now, if they still live. They cannot see him looking exactly the same as when they knew him twenty-five years ago.

Not _exactly_ the same, perhaps. He goes clean-shaven now—it's always been his preference, ever since his time in the Church in Genova; he'd just let himself go for a while in between. And he thinks he probably carries himself differently these days, especially after the decade with Andromache and Quỳnh. He has a confidence in himself and ease in his own body that took him a long time to earn.

He wishes his old friends could have known him as he is now. He thinks he would have been a better friend to them in turn.

Finally, he manages to get himself hired on with a Greek cargo ship. All that winter and well into the spring, he crisscrosses the Mediterranean seemingly at random, wherever he can find a crew willing to hire him from one port to the next. And slowly but surely he progresses westward, until one unremarkable day in late spring he finds himself stepping off a ship and onto the docks of Mahdia.

It's a beautiful city, a little gem nestled against the sea, vibrant with color and life. Nicolò makes no concrete plans, refuses to let his mind dwell on it, but somehow he finds himself asking idly in a marketplace about a merchant family called al-Kaysani.

He's directed to a sort of villa, several lovely houses clustered around a graceful courtyard, and when he asks at the gate, eventually a man in his mid-thirties comes out to greet him. And oh, for an instant, all of the air rushes out of his lungs.

He looks _so_ much like Yusuf.

"I am Ibrahim ibn Hamza," the stranger with Yusuf's face says cheerfully. No—not quite Yusuf's face. This man's nose is thinner, his eyes a lighter shade of brown and spaced further apart, his beard shaved closer to the skin. And he's an inch or two shorter than Nicolò, not taller. But the resemblance is striking. "You were asking for the merchant al-Kaysani, yes? That would be my uncle, Ahmed ibn Ibrahim al-Kaysani, but he's not feeling up to visitors at the moment. I can speak in his stead."

Nicolò's mind scrambles for a reply. He had not actually thought this through. But Yusuf had been Yusuf ibn Ibrahim—his brothers, hadn't Ahmed been the name of one of his brothers? Nicolò can't remember for sure. It must be. "Yes," he manages. "I'm sorry to hear that your uncle is unwell. But I was actually hoping to find his...brother, I believe? Yusuf. I'm looking for Yusuf ibn Ibrahim al-Kaysani."

The man—another Ibrahim, must have been named after his grandfather—brightens for a moment, then sobers. "Yusuf! Yes, he's another uncle of mine. But he no longer lives here, I'm afraid. What brings you in search of him?"

Someone calls for him from the house, a woman's voice. "Ibrahim! Have you no courtesy? Invite your guest in."

Ibrahim rolls his eyes, but grins. "Forgive me, my manners are lacking. Will you come in and take some refreshment? And I'm sorry—what was your name?"

"Yes, thank you," Nicolò says. "My name is Nicolò."

He's led into the inner courtyard, where an older woman joins them with fruit juice and a plate of flaky pastry. Ibrahim introduces her as his mother, Maryam, and explains Nicolò's presence to her. Maryam goes very still as she looks him over; her son doesn't seem to notice, asking Nicolò eagerly about how he'd known Yusuf, while Nicolò tries to stammer out appropriately vague responses.

"Ibrahim, I have forgotten, I meant to go to the market to purchase fresh fish for our dinner tonight," Maryam interrupts smoothly. "But my knees are giving me such trouble today. Will you not run this small errand for me? Before all the best of the day's catch is gone? I can entertain our visitor on your behalf."

Ibrahim agrees and kisses her cheek as he goes, taking his leave of Nicolò with good humor. "You have a very dutiful son," Nicolò says once he's gone.

"I do." Maryam's eyes are sharp, her hands tightly clasped on the little table between them. "But you did not come here for my son. You are here for my brother Yusuf." She searches his face, and whatever she finds there softens her tone, ever so slightly. "You're his Frank, aren't you? No," she corrects herself with a faint smile, "my apologies. His _Genovese_."

There are a hundred possible responses Nicolò could have to that, including feigned confusion or flat denial. But somehow, all he can say is: "Yes. I am."

"Good," she says. "He has been waiting for you, I think, though he will not admit it, the stubborn old fool. But he's not here. He left Mahdia, oh, it must be ten years ago now."

Nicolò's heart vacillates wildly in his chest. His hands feel cold and clammy. "Do you know where he went?"

"Palermo, on Sicily. He's been developing business relationships for our family there." She's still studying him so intently. "It's all true, isn't it? What he told me of Jerusalem? The pair of you…" She shakes her head slowly, tucking an errant lock of hair back into her scarf. "You look younger than my children, even."

He laughs unsteadily. "I'm not." Glancing back out toward the gate, he asks, "Your son, he doesn't know?"

"No," she says quietly. "I'm the only one Yusuf told, and I have kept his secret."

Nicolò hesitates, then tells her, "He always spoke highly of you. When I knew him, while we traveled together, he wanted nothing more than to return home to his family—but you in particular, I think."

Her eyes crease at the corners when she smiles, so like her brother. "He's always been my favorite as well."

"I imagine Yusuf would be everyone's favorite," he says softly, returning her smile.

Maryam tilts her head to one side, tapping her chin. "He only spoke of you the once, I admit, and there were many things he left unsaid. But I heard them anyway." She nods to herself, then gets to her feet. "I am glad to have seen you for myself, Nicolò di Genova. Now go on, before you miss the tide. I will give you his address in Palermo." More quietly, she adds, "I worry he has already lingered there too long."

Nicolò thinks of Alexandria, the accident at the docks. Of the White Monastery, where he cannot return until all who knew him are dead and gone; of Andromache and Quỳnh, slipping agelessly across the world, circling over and around and back again with centuries between each visit. Of Mahdia, where Yusuf's family is growing old while time leaves him behind.

"I cannot thank you enough," he tells Maryam when he takes his leave of her.

She reaches out and clasps his hands, just for a moment. "Take care of him," she says firmly. "That is all the thanks I require."

* * *

By the time he reaches Palermo, Yusuf is gone.

There was a fire, he learns; several houses burned to the ground. There are still charred remnants on that street that have not yet been cleared away. Yusuf had come out with the neighbors to help carry buckets, and had been seen running into a burning house just before it collapsed, trying to save someone trapped inside. Because of _course_ he had, Nicolò thinks, despairing: that perfect, noble, brave, stupid man. Seven others died that night along with Yusuf al-Kaysani. The news has not yet reached Mahdia, but it will soon enough.

Nicolò wants to _scream_. He was close, so close. After twenty-five years, Nicolò has now missed him by a matter of weeks. And the whole town thinks Yusuf dead, so there is no one he can ask where the damnable man might have gone next.

(There is a moment, when he first hears of it, that his own heart stops beating; that he thinks of Lykon, who he will never meet. But no: it's not possible, not so soon. Not when he and Yusuf are still so _new_. He refuses to let himself dwell on it.)

After a week or so of fruitless searching through Palermo and the surrounding countryside, Nicolò is forced to concede defeat. He doesn't even know where to begin. Yusuf cannot return home to Mahdia, and where else now would he go? The whole world stretches out before him, and he's been sailing the Mediterranean for many years, could have any number of contacts or boltholes in any number of ports.

And Nicolò does not share his dreams, cannot glimpse and grasp at any clues for himself. The only people who might be able to track Yusuf now are the two women he'd deliberately left behind. More fool he. 

_You're the one who believes we share some higher purpose,_ Yusuf teased him once, just before they parted for good, and when Nicolò closes his eyes, he can so clearly see the particular curve of his smile. _Have a little faith, my friend._

It is summer in Sicily. All he can do is make his way to Constantinople, and wait for the seasons to turn, until Andromache and Quỳnh join him. And they'll figure it out together from there.

He has to believe that they cannot have come so far for nothing.


	7. a distance erased with the greatest of ease

When Yusuf disembarks at the harbor in Constantinople and looks up at those imposing, crenellated walls, he has a moment of absolute blind panic where he does not know what the fuck he's doing.

Here he is, in a place he's never before seen, on the basis of glimpses in a dream, trying to find three people in a city of two hundred thousand. Two of whom he has never met before in his life. He doesn't even know if they're still here; he dreamed of them once more, just after leaving Smyrna, and feverishly sketched everything he could remember from it, but that was well over a week ago. They could easily have left the city by now. This is _insane_. He has completely lost his wits.

He finds a quiet corner where he can sit and breathe deeply for a few minutes, and then pushes himself back to his feet. All right. All he can do is keep moving forward.

That first dream, the one that led him to Constantinople, had shown Nicolò and one of the women in a marketplace. In the second, all three of them had been dining together in an inn of some kind, lamplight shining through the open shutters of the window behind them, glimpses of a city street in the early evening. He hopes that inn was still within _this_ city, and not a different one. It's all he has to go by.

Feeling vaguely ridiculous, Yusuf purchases a skewer of lamb from a cart and then shows the vendor his sketch of the marketplace, asking if she knows where in the city it might be. The woman studies it, muttering under her breath, then calls out to the fruit vendor across the way to get a second opinion. Within minutes a small crowd of five or six people have gathered around and are debating the matter with one another, and Yusuf is about ready to crawl out of his skin in embarrassment. But if they can come to any kind of consensus, it will have been worth it.

Eventually, Yusuf is given detailed if somewhat confusing directions to a certain neighborhood with a broad avenue that contains market stalls much like those in his drawing. It's a start, at least. He's always been comfortable in cities, and finds his way without too many wrong turnings, and sure enough, there's a marketplace with the backdrop of walls, spires visible from a certain angle. Walking through a place he recalls so vividly but has never actually been is...a very strange sensation, actually.

All right. He found the market. Now to see if there's an inn anywhere nearby with this same sense of familiarity.

He doesn't find it before nightfall, but remains buoyed by his earlier success, so he picks another inn at random and purchases a bed for the night. He'll keep searching in the morning. In the meantime, maybe he'll get lucky and dream of them again tonight. If not tonight, he has faith the dreams will come again soon enough. And either they'll continue to narrow down his search within Constantinople, or show him definitively that the women and Nicolò have moved on; either way, it will be useful information to have.

Two days later, Yusuf is haggling over the price of a hot pie at a different market—he does need to _eat_ while he's here, after all—when he feels a tap on his shoulder and turns.

"Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani," the dark-eyed woman from his dreams says sternly, in Persian-accented but otherwise perfect Arabic, "you have been a _pain in the ass_ to find."

And then she smiles widely and throws her arms around his neck, more or less leaping into his arms. He catches her, because he has no choice in the matter, and then spins her around for good measure in retaliation. By the time he releases her, he realizes that he's grinning, too.

"Sorry, sorry," he tells the baffled pie-seller, in the Greek they'd been using to converse. "She's an old friend." Switching back to Arabic, he glances down at the woman and adds, archly, "So what is your name, again?"

She laughs brightly. "Quỳnh," she tells him. "And I hope you're buying enough to share."

"Well, _now_ I am."

Quỳnh cajoles him into purchasing three different pies and a hefty slice of baklava from a different stall before they leave the market. "As payment," she tells him, "for all the time and effort you've cost us. Do you know how long Nicolò has been off searching for you?"

His heart immediately leaps up into his throat, and he chokes on it for a moment. "Nicolò?" he asks, a little hoarsely. "He's not with you?"

"Oh, he's back _now_ ," she says, rolling her eyes. "Because by the time he tracked you as far as Sicily, you'd died in some fire." Her nose scrunches up. "That was a deeply unpleasant dream. I've never burned to death before, and I can't say I care to try it."

"He was in Palermo?" Yusuf wants to kick himself, repeatedly. All these months, he's been chasing a ghost across the Mediterranean, and apparently he could have found him by just _staying put_ for a little bit longer.

There's a shrewd gleam in Quỳnh's eyes that reminds him uncomfortably of his sister. "He was," she says. "But I suppose it worked out in the end."

She leads him directly to the inn where they've been staying, and which he recognizes at once from his dream. It's nowhere near the original marketplace, which explains why he hadn't found it on his own yet, and he takes a moment to breathe into the sheer absurdity of this whole endeavor. How impossible it seems that they stumbled across each other in spite of it all.

And then they're upstairs, and Quỳnh is pushing open a door, singing out, "Andromache! Nicolò! I've brought lunch and an extra treat!"

Yusuf hears Nicolò's voice before he sees him. "It had better be baklava," he says, with an undercurrent of laughter that Yusuf can't recall hearing in his tone before. "It's all she's been talking about all morning."

"Byzantium is the only place in the world that prepares it _properly_ ," a woman insists as Quỳnh clasps Yusuf's wrist and drags him inside.

The room contains a bed, a large trunk, a low table, and two chairs. At the moment, both chairs have been shoved out of the way so that Nicolò and the taller woman from Yusuf's dreams—Andromache—can sprawl on the floor beside the table, which hosts a startling array of weaponry. From the rags and jars surrounding them, Yusuf surmises that the pair are currently engaged in the maintenance of said weapons. Andromache is sharpening a knife; Nicolò seems to be working oil into the leather grip of a recurve bow.

They both look up at the same time as the door closes behind Yusuf and Quỳnh. Andromache's eyes narrow in suspicion for half a heartbeat before recognition dawns, and her lips curve into a smile. And Nicolò…

Nicolò goes still, hands frozen on the bow. He just stares up at Yusuf and does not move a muscle.

Of course he looks the same as in Yusuf's memories, and yet...not. There are superficial changes—he's clean-shaven now in place of the scruffy beard, and no longer has that pinched, hungry look shared by all those who had been at Jerusalem. (Men on both sides of that siege had physically suffered for it; Yusuf remembers all too well his own overindulgences once he'd managed to return to civilization, the lingering trauma of long months of deprivation.)

But even in the scattered flashes Yusuf had glimpsed of him in dreams, he couldn't help but notice other, subtler changes, now finally manifested before his waking eyes. Nicolò holds himself differently, more assuredly, no longer cringing away from taking up space. Gone is the perpetual hunch of his shoulders, the sense of carrying a heavy weight. The shadows behind his eyes have retreated somewhat; he's lost that glassy, haunted expression. He looks...healthier, Yusuf supposes, though that sounds ridiculous even within his own head. 

Yusuf thinks he could easily stand here staring at Nicolò for a very long time, just studying him, mapping out the subtle differences that twenty-five years have wrought between them, and still never quite manage to put it into words. His fingers itch for his charcoals. Maybe he could capture it on paper instead.

"Yusuf, I take it?" Andromache says, startling him out of his reverie. There's a certain wryness to her tone that brings heat to Yusuf's cheeks, catches him out. She stands with fluid grace, stepping around the table to greet him, and extends a hand. He clasps it, dragging his attention away from Nicolò's wondering face with an effort, and gives her his most charming smile.

"It's good to finally meet you," he tells her sincerely. Her grip is strong and sure, assessing. "I'm told I owe you an apology for the delay!"

Andromache lifts an eyebrow. "If there's fresh baklava in that sack, I might be persuaded to forgive you."

"Then it appears the stars are in my favor." He hands it over, to the sound of Quỳnh's laughter, and Andromache lets go of his hand with a greedy little smile to snatch at it. The women sit together atop the bed, spreading out the pastries between them, and Yusuf turns back to Nicolò.

Nicolò carefully sets down the bow and wipes his hands off on the rag before getting to his feet, his gaze never leaving Yusuf.

"Hello, Nicolò," Yusuf says, his throat dry. He can feel his own smile softening into something more natural, more genuine. "It's been a while."

"It has," Nicolò agrees. Twenty-five years, and Yusuf still can't quite interpret the look in those storm-tossed eyes. Nicolò hesitates, then extends his own hand, mirroring Andromache's greeting.

_Fuck it_ , Yusuf thinks, and uses Nicolò's outstretched hand to pull him into a hug instead. If Quỳnh could climb him like a tree upon their first meeting in the marketplace, surely his and Nicolò's past companionship warrants more than a cool handshake.

After one stiff, startled moment, Nicolò relaxes into it, wrapping his arms around Yusuf warmly. He's so solid and _real_ , at last: surprisingly broad shoulders, steady hands pressed against Yusuf's back, the familiar scent of his skin. Yusuf feels surrounded by him, their very breaths unconsciously synching. How could he have so badly missed something he'd never had? But oh, he _had_. 

Nicolò's smooth cheek presses against his for one fleeting moment. "I'm so glad you're here," he murmurs, breath tickling Yusuf's ear. A shiver trips up and down his spine, but by then Nicolò is already pulling away, releasing him.

"Me, too," Yusuf tells him, and is rewarded by a true smile tugging at the corner of Nicolò's mouth, just for a moment. It settles into his eyes instead, warming them, and Yusuf feels somehow lighter for it.

The four of them spend the rest of the day and evening cloistered in that room, just talking, filling in the gaps between the shared dreams and sketching out the broader strokes of their immortality for Yusuf. They converse primarily in Greek, a primary language of Constantinople and once the only tongue Yusuf and Nicolò had shared. But when Yusuf slips into Arabic at one point, all three follow him there easily, even Nicolò, and Yusuf listens in wonder as his soft accent curls fluently around the language.

The women switch to a completely foreign tongue, all tonal rises and falls, to debate the finer points of some past adventure, while Nicolò watches them fondly. "Do you understand what they're saying?" Yusuf asks him; they're sitting close enough on the floor that their elbows knock together.

"Bits and pieces," Nicolò replies. "I can follow the general gist. Don't worry, they'll remember us again soon enough." He tilts his head to share a small smile with Yusuf, and for a moment, Yusuf forgets the two women entirely.

Nicolò excuses himself when it grows dark enough to light the lamps, returning not too long later with dinner from the kitchens downstairs. By the time they've finished and Nicolò has returned their plates, Yusuf's head is spinning from all the new information he's absorbed, not to mention the wine they shared. He's not as observant a Muslim as some, but he still doesn't drink often.

"I think I'd like to step outside," he says, groaning theatrically as he pulls himself to his feet. "Clear my head a bit."

Nicolò makes a move as if to join him, but Andromache is already standing, and at the press of her hand to his shoulder, he subsides. "I could use some air myself," she says. Her tone brooks no argument.

Out on the street, the air is chilly, and Yusuf draws his cloak a little tighter. It's not _that_ cold, but it is winter, and Constantinople lies further north than he's previously traveled. Andromache hardly seems to notice the bite in the air. She tilts her face up to the sky and breathes deeply, then wrinkles her nose.

"City stench," she grumbles. "Give me an open field any day."

Yusuf shrugs. He's spent most of his life in cities, or traveling between them. "Constantinople is better than some."

"And worse than others. Come on, I need a walk, we spent too long cooped up inside today."

He follows, though he keeps a wary eye on their surroundings. He still doesn't know Constantinople well, and in any city, solitary travelers can become prey as the night darkens. Sure, they can't die, but it would still be unpleasant to get knifed in some alleyway.

Andromache notices his watchfulness and gives him a wolflike smile. "If anyone tries to rob us, it'll be _their_ problem."

Yusuf takes in the understated confidence of her stride, the sharpness in her eyes, the glint of moonlight along the blade of the axe strapped to her back. She's fought her way through his dreams for decades and walked this earth for countless centuries. "I believe you."

They walk on in silence for a time, following no discernable route. Finally, Andromache asks, "So, Yusuf, what actually brought you to Constantinople?"

He peers at her face in the thin moonlight. Her expression is opaque to him; he finds her far more difficult to read than Quỳnh. "It's as I told you: I'd been sketching a dream, and a crewmate recognized the city."

"But why _now_?" Her tone holds no clues. "You never tried to find us before."

"Why did you never come looking for _me_?" he counters. "You're the one who knew what this all meant; I wasn't even sure the dreams were _real_ until…"

She raises an eyebrow. "Until?"

"Until Nicolò began appearing in them." He sighs and fusses with the fastening on his cloak. "He always swore there must be a purpose to the dreams. I suppose once I saw that he'd found you, I began to believe as well."

"That would have been more than ten years ago, though, and still you kept to yourself. So what changed?"

Yusuf blows out an exasperated breath. "He disappeared from the dreams. I found I...needed to discover what had become of him."

"Hmm." Andromache shoots him a sidelong glance. "We did look for you at first, incidentally. It just took us a while to make our way west, and Nicolò proved easier for us to track at the time. We only stopped searching for you because he asked us to."

That startles him. He literally stops in his tracks, and it takes Andromache a few steps to realize and turn back. "What? Why? Did he…" He swallows, throat suddenly dry. "We...did not part on the best of terms. I suppose I can understand why he might not have wanted…"

Andromache folds her arms across her chest, looking faintly amused. "He was pretty adamant that you should be allowed to remain with your family. I'm pretty sure he thought _you_ wouldn't want to see _him_. You know, for all the times we dreamt of you over the years, he almost never asked what you were doing, or where we thought you might be. All he wanted to know was if you seemed _happy_." She shakes her head. "As if we had any way of answering that."

He has no idea what to do with this information, so simply tucks it quietly behind his heart to revisit later, and says nothing.

"So were you?" At his questioning look, she rolls her eyes and clarifies. "Happy? With your family?"

"For a time. Why are you asking me all this?"

"Because I don't know you yet," Andromache tells him matter-of-factly. "There are very few of us, and one way or another, we're going to be stuck together for a very long time. A new immortal is always a herald of change; two of you at once…" She shakes her head. "I'm still not sure what that means."

Yusuf tsks, hands at his hips. "Life is change. Did you have this conversation with Nicolò, too, or is it just me you don't trust?"

"The world changes around us, yes, and we adapt to it because we have no choice. But we ourselves remain constant in many ways." She meets his gaze levelly. "Look, Nicolò clearly thinks the sun shines out of your ass, and he's been singing your praises for the past decade, so of course Quỳnh's on board as well. I respect their judgment, as a rule, and I haven't seen anything in our dreams that would make me think ill of you. But you can't blame me for wanting to get to know you a little better for myself. You _will_ change our lives together, Yusuf, just as Nicolò already has. I'm just trying to figure out what we'll be changing into."

She's not wrong, but she's not the only one whose way of life is currently undergoing upheaval. "I think we're all going to have to discover that together," he offers, and she gives him a razor-thin smile in exchange.

It's very late by the time they return to the inn. There's a single candle still burning in their room, and in its glow Yusuf can see their two companions curled up together on the bed.

Andromache pushes their door open in near silence, and Yusuf tries to keep his tread as light as possible, but it's not quite enough. Nicolò lies on his side facing the door, and his eyes blink open at the first steps they take across the threshold. He lifts his head slightly, hand moving under the pillow where he likely has a knife stashed, but an instant later he recognizes them and relaxes. His face is creased from the pillow. Yusuf suppresses the completely bizarre urge to reach down and stroke his hair.

Behind Nicolò, Quỳnh makes a disgruntled sound and tucks her face into the nape of his neck. Nicolò glances up past Yusuf to Andromache, his shoulder twitching in the barest hint of a shrug, and she laughs softly. She's already stripping off her outerwear, and moments later she crawls onto the other side of the bed to join them. As soon as her weight dips the mattress, Quỳnh rolls over to snuggle up against her instead.

Nicolò doesn't appear at all put out by this transfer of Quỳnh's affections. He props his head up on one hand, watching Yusuf sleepily. "We set up some blankets for you on the floor," he murmurs. "I meant to do the same, but…" He glances back over his shoulder with a fond smile. 

Behind him, Andromache snorts in amusement. "She hates to be cold when she sleeps." Quỳnh makes a vaguely affirmative sound and wriggles a little, her backside pressed against Nicolò's.

Yusuf can't begin to untangle the relationship between the three of them tonight. It's late and he's crashing hard with the abrupt release of months of tension as it finally sinks in that his long search is at an end. He has no idea what comes next, but a very cozy-looking nest of blankets awaits him, and he's pretty sure he could sleep for a solid week at this point. He'll deal with the rest in the morning. Or afternoon, preferably.

"Thank you," he tells Nicolò, keeping his voice low. "That looks just fine."

Nicolò smiles with his eyes. "Good night, Yusuf."

* * *

After some discussion, they agree to remain in the city at least for the winter, so that they can all get used to one another. Andromache disappears for a week and then returns with a full purse and keys to a small but comfortable house in the artisans' district.

"How civilized," Quỳnh teases, when they step into their temporary home. "Why, there's even a bathhouse nearby!"

Andromache rolls her eyes. "I wouldn't want to give our new companion the wrong idea about how we generally live."

"Or the right one."

Yusuf glances skeptically between them, then to Nicolò, who's hiding a smile in the corners of his mouth. "Andromache's standards for habitation can be...rudimentary," Nicolò explains. "But I think this will do very nicely."

"Don't get used to it."

Most importantly, the house comes with a private courtyard, and Yusuf quickly learns that its purpose is for Andromache to torture him extensively in all weather throughout the winter months in the guise of combat training. When he points out that he has in fact fought in a war and was single-handedly responsible for at least eight of Nicolò's earliest deaths, she just gives him a flat, unimpressed look.

"When's the last time you actually _used_ that thing for more than decoration?" she asks, gesturing at his saif. When he has to pause and think about his answer, she nods as though he's proven her point. "Right. There's no way in hell I'm taking you on a job until we get you back in fighting form."

Nicolò just grins—an astonishing expression that Yusuf has never once witnessed before—and claps him companionably on the back. "Better you than me."

While Quỳnh and Andromache take turns absolutely obliterating him in the courtyard for hours each day, Nicolò has a tendency to vanish for days at a time, often returning only to sleep.

"Where do you _go_?" Yusuf finally demands after dinner one night. The women have gone out drinking together, leaving them with a saucy wink (from Quỳnh) and instructions not to wait up. 

Nicolò shrugs, leaning back on his elbows and watching the flames dance in their fireplace. They each have a pallet on the floor of the main room, heavily fortified with blankets and cushions, while Andromache and Quỳnh share the tiny bedroom. "The hospital, usually. They can always use extra help."

"The hospital?" Yusuf blinks. He's not sure what he was expecting, but certainly not that. "What on earth do you do there?"

"Whatever is needed." Nicolo looks over at him, open and honest as ever. "I studied medicine for a time in Baghdad. I'm no physician, but I can stitch a wound or set a bone, and mostly they just use me to fetch and carry things, or hold someone's hand while the doctor treats them."

Yusuf finds his gaze drawn down to Nicolò's large, capable hands. He can easily picture them steadily sewing up broken skin, or calming with a gentle touch. "That's...huh. I didn't know that."

"This life of ours is very long," Nicolò says quietly. "It's not all violence and swordplay, despite what Andromache may have led you to believe. There are many ways we can help people." He shifts a little closer, lightly bumping his shoulder against Yusuf's. "Andromache is pushing you hard right now, because she wants to make sure we're all at the same level when next the need arises. But even she does not constantly seek out that sort of fight. Well," he amends, with a crooked smile, "sometimes, when she's bored, but that's different."

"Good to know." Yusuf returns his smile, then looks back at the fire. "I used to do something like you in Palermo. Not at the hospital itself, but there was a fever one winter, and they needed all the help they could get tending the ill in their homes. Once I realized I couldn't die of it—well, not permanently, anyway—it seemed churlish not to volunteer."

Nicolò hums under his breath. "I've not died of any sickness yet. Quỳnh told me we _can_ fall ill, sometimes, but usually recover too quickly for it to kill us."

"I must've gotten lucky, then," Yusuf says drily. "At least I only caught it the once, no matter how long I worked among the sick. And there are definitely worse ways to go."

"The fire in Palermo," Nicolò murmurs. "That sounded awful."

Yusuf shudders. "Definitely not a death I'd care to revisit. What's the worst you've had so far? Apart from death on my blade, of course."

"Ha." Nicolò shoves him, rolling his eyes. "No, at least that was quick. I was buried alive once. Much worse."

Yusuf stares at him. "What? Really? How long did it take you to dig your way out?"

"I didn't," Nicolo says with a grimace. "It was a mass grave, there were too many others piled on top of me. Oh, don't look at me like that, obviously I'm fine, Andromache and Quỳnh found me."

"How long?"

"I honestly don't remember. Can we talk about something else now?" He pulls away again, retreating to his own pallet and stretching out. "Quỳnh says your training is going well. Apparently you're already a far better swordsman than I was when I joined them. 'Fewer bad habits to unlearn,' is how she put it."

Yusuf sighs and allows the change in subject, though he files that story away to harangue Andromache and Quỳnh about later. "Well, I suppose you'll have to try me for yourself and find out."

Nicolò's eyes gleam in the firelight. "I look forward to it."

* * *

A few days later, they do.

"Nicolò tells me you're looking for a fair fight for a change," Andromache says, tossing Yusuf his saif. "And I wouldn't mind seeing how the two of you do together."

Quỳnh has already brought a couple of stools out into the courtyard, and perches gleefully on one to watch.

"You're sure you want them to witness this?" Yusuf gives Nicolò his widest, most obnoxious grin. "I remember how most of our sparring sessions in the desert ended."

"So do I," Nicolò says wryly. "But that was quite a long time ago."

They both ready their weapons of choice—Yusuf well remembers that ugly, battered sword of his—and square off across the cold little courtyard. After a few quiet moments, Yusuf quirks a brow at Andromache. She waves a dismissive hand. "This isn't a fucking duel, you can get started whenever."

With no further warning whatsoever, Nicolò surges forward into his first attack.

It's like a half-forgotten dance, but Yusuf's body still knows every step, muscle memory taking over. They slash and spin around the yard, matching each other move for move, in perfect counterpoint. The air is bitingly cold, and the ground beneath their feet is tiled rather than packed sand, but oh, how it brings him back to that quiet desert between Jerusalem and Cairo.

Yusuf has always been a hair faster than Nicolò, and that holds true even now, but Nicolò has spent years learning to compensate for his relative lack of speed against Andromache and Quỳnh, who both move with a viper's quickness. And somehow Yusuf managed to forget how damnably _strong_ Nicolò is. He appears deceptively slender, but he wields that bulky sword as though it weighs no more than one of Quỳnh's thin blades, powering each stroke with those broad shoulders of his. And both of them have greatly improved their stamina under Andromache's merciless tutelage. Every minor cut or bruise they take heals within moments; nothing disabling enough to have any impact.

He doesn't know how long they dance like this together around and around the courtyard, but finally Yusuf spots the briefest of openings and seizes it, whirling around to slip his saif up and under Nicolo's hilt, disarming him. The heavy sword clatters to the ground as Yusuf pushes Nicolò up against the nearest wall, his blade coming up to kiss Nicolò's throat.

There's barely an inch of height difference between them; Yusuf exploits it to the hilt, bearing down to hold Nicolò in place. "I win."

"Are you sure?" Nicolò breathes, cocking an eyebrow. Yusuf follows his gaze downward to see the very tip of Nicolò's dagger pressing into the fabric of his tunic, just at his heart.

He exhales slowly. Nicolò leans forward, almost imperceptibly, a single vivid droplet of blood appearing against his pale neck where the keen edge of the saif just barely nicks him. His skin heals as Yusuf stares.

"Well," Andromache drawls from somewhere behind him, "that was certainly interesting."

Yusuf is abruptly aware of how closely they're pressed together, along the whole length of their bodies. His own knee is braced between Nicolò's legs, and heat crackles beneath his skin despite the cold winter air. If he were to tilt his head just so, their noses would brush together, and he can't help but glance down to Nicolò's full lips, so close to his own.

He lowers his saif and wrenches himself away, forcing a laugh. "Well fought," he says, grinning. "Though I'm not sure that was fair play, with the dagger. I thought this was supposed to be a swordfight!"

"Hasn't Andromache taught you anything yet?" Nicolò remains where he is, back to the wall, looking perfectly at ease. There's a curious glint to his eyes. "We rarely get the luxury of a fair fight."

Then he pushes himself away from the wall, smoothly bending down to retrieve his fallen sword and make his way back into the house. Yusuf can only stand there and watch him go, his skin still thrumming with energy, pulse racing. Thinking of those bright gray eyes, flecked with blue and gold, so intent on his; the feel of Nicolò's long body beneath him, that sharp intake of breath.

Oh, Yusuf thinks.

_Oh._


	8. acknowledge the past as lessons exquisitely crafted

The first time Nicolò dies after Yusuf joins them, it's technically self-inflicted. But only in the sense that he's trapped in a burning belltower, and the options before him are to either remain where he is and burn to death, or leap from the tower and probably break most of his bones.

He has no interest in experiencing death by fire, so he chooses the lesser evil and jumps. It hurts terribly, but only for the briefest instant before darkness claims him.

When he revives, his whole body does still ache with memory of the impact, and he can feel some of his bones snap back into place—not his favorite sensation—but there are also steady hands bracing his shoulders, and Yusuf's worried face inverted above his own. So this is already the best resurrection Nicolò has ever experienced.

"Nicolò! Are you all right?"

"I am now," Nicolò says before he has the chance to think better of it. He grits his teeth, wincing as his spine realigns properly. "Or, well, I will be. Let me just—"

Yusuf braces him as he sits up, hissing sympathetically as he watches Nicolò's ankle twist back out of its unnatural angle. Bits of ash fall lightly around them like gray snowflakes, the night sky unnaturally illuminated by the flames. They're in the Balkans, the eastern fringes of the Byzantine Empire; that this ancient church had survived decades of war between the Bulgarians and Byzantines only to be destroyed by an accidental fire feels deeply unfair to him. But no one seems to have been seriously hurt, save Nicolò himself, and he's glad they happened to be here to help. 

Yusuf seems significantly less sanguine about the whole thing, though. "God above, Nicolò, you abject fool! What the hell were you thinking?"

"Mostly that burning to death sounded worse," Nicolò points out. Despite Yusuf's tone, his hands are gentle as he helps Nicolò to his feet, and there's far more concern than anger in his dark eyes.

"Yes, but why go back into the church at all? There was no one left inside!"

"Oh!" In the rush of it all, Nicolò has nearly forgotten. He carefully pulls the bound manuscript from where he'd tucked it into his coat. "I hope I didn't bleed on it."

Yusuf stares down at the tome in his hands, then back up to his face. "You went back into a burning building to retrieve a _book_?"

"The priest was distraught over it. It's an illuminated manuscript that's at least two hundred years old, and by far the most valuable item their parish possesses." Nicolò turns a few pages gently, just to be sure there's no damage. He's no expert in such matters, but it looks well enough to him, and very beautiful besides. "I have to return this to him."

The expression on Yusuf's face is completely opaque to him. "You just _died_ to save a book."

"I've seen you in the libraries of Constantinople, you know," Nicolò reminds him. "You once spent a solid twenty minutes lecturing me about the proper way to handle a manuscript. People touch their lovers with less reverence."

"Yes, but…" Yusuf's mouth twists unhappily. "Your _life_ , Nicolò."

Nicolò wants to cup Yusuf's face in his hands, smooth those worried creases away. He has to content himself with simply giving his shoulder a brief squeeze. "We have lives enough to spare. Let me find the priest to return this, and then we can look for Quỳnh and Andromache to see if there's more that's needful for us to do here."

Yusuf just shakes his head and follows.

* * *

The first time Yusuf dies in front of Nicolò—well, the first since he last killed him himself, anyway—Nicolò loses his mind a little bit.

Andromache has been leading them gradually through Europe via its interior, avoiding the Mediterranean as a general rule. ("My fault, I assume?" Yusuf asked drily.

"Consider it an overabundance of caution," Andromache replied. "You certainly got around for a while there.")

So they're somewhere in northern Hungary when winter falls, and it's frankly the coldest either Nicolò or Yusuf have been in their lives. Andromache and Quỳnh mock them relentlessly and threaten to make them spend a winter in the Himalayas one of these decades, just to toughen them up; Yusuf promises to tie them to a tree during the night and ride off southward with all their horses and supplies. He's mostly joking, Nicolò thinks.

It's apparently a shitty winter even by Hungarian standards, which means food stores run low and folk get fractious. Bandits stalk the few active trade routes, and even begin to stage raids directly on larger villages. Normally, Nicolò would feel some sympathy toward desperate men who are only trying to fill their bellies, but the families they're stealing from are at risk of starving themselves.

One particular town's borders are regularly harassed by a gang with a reputation for bloodthirstiness—they murder freely as well as steal. Once Quỳnh tracks them to their lair, a camp deep in a densely wooded forest, Andromache plots out a methodical counter-raid against the raiders.

It goes quite smoothly, Nicolò thinks, and they soon have all the surviving bandits bound together to present to the town authorities. Quỳnh and Yusuf do one last quick patrol around the camp while Andromache puts the fear of God—or, rather, _her_ —into their prisoners. Of course, that's when one last, furious man they hadn't known about springs out from behind a tree and hurls a fucking spear directly at Yusuf's exposed back. It plunges through him with a sickening squelch. Nicolò, already running forward with a cry, can see the barbed tip of it protrude from Yusuf's belly.

He can't remember the exact order of events that follow, but when he comes back to himself, the final bandit's head is lying in the snow several feet away from the rest of him, and Nicolò's blade is dripping red. He tosses it aside heedlessly in favor of dropping to his knees beside Yusuf's too-still body.

He's sprawled awkwardly on his side, the spear's shaft still jutting out behind him. The front of his cloak and shirt are a gory mess. His beautiful brown eyes are wide and glassy, as if in surprise, and his lips are stained with blood. He's not breathing, not moving—

"The spear, Nicolò," Quỳnh says urgently, crouching down beside him. "So long as it pierces him, he'll only die all over again once he revives. That's all it is, help me with him…"

She wraps her arms around Yusuf's shoulders, holding him in place, and after a slow, dumb moment just blinking at the awful picture they make, Nicolò finally realizes what she needs him to do. He braces himself against the frozen ground and takes hold of the protruding shaft of the spear. "The barbs at the tip—"

Quỳnh grimaces, but nods anyway. "Removing it will do even more damage, yes, but once it's out he'll be able to heal. Just do it. Quickly, now, before he awakens."

The thought of Yusuf choking back to life with this _thing_ still inside him, of having to watch him die all over again, is enough to spur Nicolò into action. He grips the shaft tightly and pulls with all his strength. It doesn't quite come cleanly, but a few more yanks and it's free.

He hurls it as far as he can from himself, cursing, then crashes back down at Yusuf's side. Quỳnh is still holding him, but she eases him back into Nicolò's waiting arms just as Yusuf jerks and gasps.

The rush of relief hits him so hard it would topple him if he still stood. He holds Yusuf tightly through it, until his eyes clear and he presses his hand to the healing wound in his belly with a groan. "What the fuck was that?"

Nicolò is completely without words. It falls to Quỳnh to reply: "A spear." She strokes his cheek fondly, then gets to her feet. "I'm going to go check in on our captives. I think Nicolò may have traumatized them for life."

"Nico…?" Yusuf tilts his head back to look up at him. "Nicolò, there's blood on your face."

"Is there?" Nicolò manages, throat raw.

Yusuf frowns, shifting so that he can sit up properly. Nicolò can't help but tighten his arms around him, just for an instant, before releasing him and pulling away a bit. Not too far. Just enough to give Yusuf space to breathe. "Are you all right?"

"Am I…?" Nicolò coughs out a disbelieving laugh. "You just came back from a spear to the gut, and you're asking me if _I'm_ all right?"

"Well, who knows what I might have missed while I was out?" Yusuf uses Nicolò as leverage to push himself up to his feet, wincing as the hole in his belly finishes healing. He offers Nicolò his hand in turn. Nicolò accepts it helplessly, still reeling. "For example, what in God's name happened to _him_?"

Nicolò's hand remains clasped in Yusuf's. He doesn't have to look over his shoulder to know that Yusuf is referring to the headless bandit. "Nothing he did not deserve. It was his spear."

For a wretched moment, he is suddenly, intensely aware of how he might appear to Yusuf: bloodstained and wild-eyed, the unwashed Frankish barbarian, slaughterer of Jerusalem. But when he manages to raise his gaze back to Yusuf's, he sees nothing there but compassionate understanding. This new relief is no less staggering than when Yusuf had finally revived.

"Come on, then," Yusuf says, curiously gentle. "Let's go check in on the rest, see if you've frightened any sense into them."

He doesn't release Nicolò's hand until they've rejoined the others, and once he does, Nicolò keenly misses his touch.

* * *

The first time Nicolò returns to the land of his birth is some thirty years after his first death, and it's more or less accidental. They go wherever their work or whims take them, and so a warm spring finds them making their way through the Ligurian countryside en route to one of the southernmost Alpine passes, where Andromache and Quỳnh apparently have a cache they haven't visited in several centuries and want to check in on. Nicolò almost doesn't realize it until they're riding through the Apennines, and he has a flash of memory so intense it nearly bowls him over.

Not a bad memory, or a particularly good one; just of riding along this precise stretch of mountain track with his brothers, intent on some sport or another, and being frustrated that as the youngest he would always feel left out of the fun. He hadn't even cared about whatever it was they were doing that day—hawking, maybe?—but it had been a glorious spring day like this, and he'd allowed himself to become distracted. He lagged well behind, only catching up with them as dusk fell. They'd mocked him mercilessly for it, but he found he'd preferred the solitude, and decided it was worth the hassle in the long run.

Now, traveling with three people whose company he genuinely _enjoys_ , Nicolò thinks perhaps he isn't truly the outsider he'd felt himself as a young man. It's just a matter of who he surrounds himself with. He'd rarely had any choice in his companions in that first life.

As if summoned by the thought, Yusuf falls back to ride alongside him, letting the two women race each other ahead of them—a rather dangerous sport, Nicolò thinks, given the terrain, but he's certainly not going to stop them.

"You've been very quiet the past few hours," Yusuf remarks.

Has it been hours? Nicolò glances up to see the sun starting to creep down below the treeline, stretching long shadows out behind them as they ride westward. "I'm fine. I just haven't been back here in a very long time; it took me by surprise."

"You know these mountains?"

Nicolò lifts an eyebrow. "Yusuf, we're about half a day's ride from Genova right now."

"Are we? Huh." Yusuf looks around them, sniffing the air. "It would never have occurred to me that we might be so close to the sea."

"Well, we'll be dodging it entirely, so long as we follow the mountain trails. These mountains eventually run straight into the Alps."

Yusuf just watches him steadily for a few minutes, and Nicolò's about to crack and demand to know what he's thinking when he finally asks, quietly, "Do you want to detour to Genova? We're not on any schedule, I'm sure Andromache wouldn't begrudge you seeing your home again."

There's that word again, _home_ , and strangely, Nicolò realizes it doesn't elicit any reaction within him at all. If their road happened to take them through Genova, he would go along willingly; no ghosts linger for him there. But he has no particular desire to visit it, either. "That's kind of you," he says. "But it's all right. It hasn't been home in a very long time. Seeing it wouldn't change anything."

_You're home enough for me._ But of course he doesn't say that aloud. Doesn't even let himself think it, really, though the very _fact_ of it has long since settled into his bones, his blood, his beating heart. To be allowed to ride alongside Yusuf, to share his fire each night, with Andromache and Quỳnh bracketing them both: this is the only homecoming he will ever need.

That night, gathered around their campfire, Quỳnh asks him: "Do you know if there's still an abbey to the southwest of here, near the sea? I remember they were a convenient stopping point before pushing into the Alps. Yes, Andromache, I know how you feel about the Church, but their hospitality was excellent and they were very generous about restocking feed for the horses."

Nicolò shifts uncomfortably. "Ah, yes. It's a good idea. But perhaps I should not join you for that detour."

"Whyever—oh!" Quỳnh's eyes brighten, and there's an amused curl to her lips. "Is that where you were a monk?"

Yusuf turns to stare at him. "You were a _monk_?"

"Yes," he says in reply to both of them; then, just to Yusuf: "I thought you knew. She teases me about it often enough."

"I thought she just meant, you know, metaphorically! Because you never…" Yusuf starts to make a crude gesture, then stops himself, mouth twisting into an expression Nicolò can't quite read.

"It's not _never_ ," Nicolò retorts, a little crossly. "Just not often. But yes, I took a vow of celibacy once, and after I left the Church..." He shrugs, trying to shake off that bubble of ill temper. "Well, I suppose I got used to going without, so I don't notice so much anymore."

That's...not a lie. Except for how it's been less and less true since Yusuf joined them in Constantinople. Nicolò has never been a slave to his own desire—he simply acknowledges it and continues on with his life—but letting himself look too long at Yusuf can feel like staring into the sun, that unbearable _brightness_. He can understand why Icarus couldn't help but fly so close. If this is what burning feels like, Nicolò is more than ready to set himself alight.

If he can't quite meet Yusuf's eyes right now...well, it's complicated.

"I didn't realize," Yusuf says softly, as if in apology.

"Well, it's been at least thirty years since you last set foot in that abbey," Andromache says, brisk as ever. "It's not likely anyone there now will remember you, but you don't have to accompany us if you'd prefer not to."

So the following afternoon, when the trail slopes down toward the sea, Nicolò sets up camp in the mountains. The women should reach the abbey before twilight, and will likely stay overnight in its guesthouse; Yusuf opts to remain with Nicolò instead.

They work together quietly, clearing ground for a fire, and settling into their own private tasks, since they have the time for it. There are always weapons to maintain and clothes to mend, and Nicolò gives both their horses a good grooming. As the shadows deepen with dusk, he rejoins Yusuf at the fire, realizing that he's hardly spoken a word to the other man all afternoon.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I've been rather poor company," Nicolò says. "Maybe you'd have done better going with Andromache and Quỳnh."

Yusuf shrugs, his expression open and warm in the firelight. "Not at all. I enjoy spending time with you, even when we're just being quiet together." He tilts his head back, looking up at the trees. "Besides, this is a lot more pleasant than the desert."

"I don't know," Nicolò murmurs, watching him. "It had its charms."

"Ah, yes, how could I forget the gentle caress of sand working its way into every orifice."

Nicolò laughs, snorting a little. "Not to mention dying of thirst practically within sight of an oasis."

"We agreed never to speak of that again."

Nicolò smiles at him, unabashed. "My lips are sealed."

Yusuf just regards him across the fire for what feels like many minutes. There's something searching in his gaze. Nicolò waits him out, wondering.

"Is it difficult for you, being here?" Yusuf finally asks. "You seem to have...withdrawn into yourself, since we passed into Liguria. Like you used to."

Abruptly, Nicolò wishes they had not settled with the fire in between them. He would far rather have Yusuf beside him, to lean into the solid warmth of his presence, and not to feel quite so pinned beneath his gaze. But moving closer now seems awkward, somehow. "No, not difficult. Not in the way you seem to think. I just haven't thought about that life for a long time, and being here...brings it back." He sighs, poking idly at the fire with a loose branch. "It's not that I have terrible memories; I just never felt like I _fit_ anywhere, not with my family in Genova, nor with the Church. Because I didn't."

"Is that why you left the abbey?"

Nicolò shrugs. "I left the abbey in order to pursue ordination; I intended to become a priest. But if you mean why I left the Church—yes, I suppose. I never felt like I was serving God to the best of my ability there. My heart was not in my vocation, and surely He would know and punish me for it. When the call came from Clermont...well, it reminded me that there were other ways to give my life to Him." He gives Yusuf a rueful smile. "Which of course turned out to be even more misguided. But in fairness, I _did_ succeed in giving my life."

"Nicolò…" Yusuf's voice sounds low and rough.

"Don't worry, Yusuf," Nicolò says gently. "I won't ask for your forgiveness again. And I no longer pretend that any man can know God's will. I can only strive to do well by others, and hope that sparks some further good in return."

Yusuf laughs softly, not at all mocking. "You would have made a good priest, Nicolò. Though I'm selfishly glad you are not." Nicolò's breath catches at that, and Yusuf goes on to add, "Because we would never have met, if that were the case."

Nicolò has to look away from him then, sure that his own expression is as open as any book. "I don't think I'd have been a very good priest back then, so it's all for the best."

"Why did you join the Church at all?"

"I was the third son," he points out drily. "It was only ever going to be the Church or the sword, for me. I trained at arms from childhood, but then..." He hesitates, flicking a glance back up at Yusuf, who's listening so intently. Like there is nothing in the world more interesting to him right now. And Yusuf, like Quỳnh or Andromache, would not think any less of Nicolò for this. "When I was seventeen, I was caught in an indelicate position with another nobleman's son from a nearby estate. So the Church it was."

Yusuf's eyes widen incredulously. "Because of course the best cure for a lad with that predilection is to lock him away with a bunch of other young men and not a woman for miles."

"Yes, even then I was aware of the irony." Nicolò laughs a little. "It wasn't so much to fix _me_ as to cover up any hint of scandal. Either of us could have denounced the other, you know—claim to have been forced. My father certainly wanted me to. I think that was the first time in my life I refused to do as I was told." He smiles to himself, remembering it. "And neither would Enrico. So the Church was the simplest way to get rid of me."

"What happened to your...Enrico?"

"He brazened it out. He was his parents' only son and heir; I assume he convinced them I was not worth bothering with, especially once I'd been removed from the picture. Last I heard of him, he'd made an advantageous marriage to some heiress." He shrugs. "Anyway, my family wanted nothing more to do with me after I left the Church. So I had nothing more to do with them, either."

"I'm sorry." Yusuf's eyes are so warm in the firelight. "My family all knew about my preferences. They just didn't particularly care."

Nicolò can suddenly see Maryam so clearly in the curl of Yusuf's hair, the shape of his jaw, the depth of his brown eyes. _He has been waiting for you, I think,_ she told Nicolò, on their one and only meeting; _take care of him_.

"They did care," he whispers. "They cared for you so much, for every part of you."

Yusuf blinks, and Nicolò can just make out the faint sheen of tears in his eyes. "Yes. I know. I miss them," he admits, as though there were any doubt of it. "So very much. I think seeing you here, in your own homeland...it makes me grieve for _you_ , that you do not seem to have anything like that to miss yourself."

Nicolò swallows hard. "You think me so hardhearted?"

" _No_ , Nicolò, never." Yusuf is the one to close the gap between them, pushing himself up in one smooth motion to stride around the fire to Nicolò's side. He drops back down beside him, one arm slung across Nicolò's shoulders. "You have such a big heart, you have space enough in it for the whole world. The fact that your family could not love you as you were says everything about them and nothing about you—unless it is how much more astonishing you are to have become this man in spite of it."

Nicolò can't find any words to respond to that, so he simply leans into Yusuf's warmth and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember how to breathe. Eventually he does. They sit together until the fire burns down to embers, and when they crawl into their bedrolls, somehow Nicolò finds himself still pressed against Yusuf, back to back, like he sometimes sleeps with Quỳnh and Andromache. This feels different, somehow— _you know how_ , a traitorous voice whispers in his heart—but it's similar enough that he can relax into it, and he sleeps soundly all through the night.

* * *

Nicolò briefly wakes to dawn creeping through the trees and the lilting murmur of Yusuf praying the Fajr. He lets the soothing, familiar sound of it lull him back to sleep.

When next he awakens, it's fully morning, and Yusuf is snoring again in his own bedroll. Nicolò leaves him be until he's managed to scrounge together breakfast in the cookpot over the fire, then prods him awake once it's clear the smell of food won't be sufficient to rouse him. Prayer aside, Yusuf has never been particularly sociable first thing in the morning, so they eat together in silence, listening to the birdsong and faint hum of insects.

Once they've finished eating and are simply sitting peaceably, Nicolò tries to put words to the the question that's been hovering in the back of his head ever since he woke. "That's the first I've overheard you at prayer in some time," he says, a little hesitantly. "Not that it's any of my business…" 

Yusuf shrugs, but doesn't seem offended. "No, you're right, I've let it slip. I suppose the longer we go on living… It's not that my faith has become any less important to me. But the outward trappings of it seem less…" He pauses, as though searching for the right words. "The daily prayers have always been a very communal activity for me. They're about God, yes, but also family, community. Praying them alone started to feel more isolating than connecting, and that doesn't seem to me to be the best mindset to approach God. So when we're in a place with a mosque, I pray. Out here in the wilderness, or in primarily Christian lands, my prayers are more...internal, I guess you could say."

Nicolò thinks about his former brothers at the abbey by the sea, or the White Monastery in the Egyptian desert. "It can feel just as lonely in the midst of a crowd," he murmurs. "Perhaps that has always been my problem. My faith has always been a very private thing, to me; I never felt like I fit in among the larger community."

"I can respect that," Yusuf says quietly. "Though perhaps you just didn't find the right community for _you_. Even so, I believe there are other, equally important ways to show reverence. I know I've found many. To live a mindful life, to show compassion, to do good works—do these not praise God?"

"They should," Nicolò agrees. "Though the way I was taught, God seemed a very stern and distant father. I struggled so hard to be worthy of Him, but it was never enough." Yusuf looks as though he's about to protest—vociferously—so Nicolò quickly cuts him off at the pass. "So what was different for you this morning, then?"

"Ah, well." Yusuf gives him a smile, oddly shy. "I woke with joy in my heart, and wanted to share it with Him."

It's such a lovely way of putting it, so beautifully _Yusuf_ , that Nicolò finds himself blinking back unexpected tears. "I'm glad."

They clean up together, Nicolò scraping out the cookpot while Yusuf douses the campfire. But of course Yusuf eventually has to come back to: "Is it still such a struggle for you?"

Nicolò sighs. "Not as it once was, after Jerusalem. But you would have been the first to tell me, then, that the struggle was certainly warranted."

Yusuf grimaces, a tacit acknowledgement. "Perhaps. And now?"

Nicolò opens his mouth, then closes it again, struck. For so long, since Yusuf walked away from him in Alexandria, he would have said that he only wanted to be worthy of _Yusuf_. To somehow _earn_ his companionship, his friendship. During their long separation, Nicolò had somehow begun holding him up as some impossible paragon of goodness.

But since their reunion, he's been able to remember that Yusuf is just a man. He's warm and good and clever and funny, sometimes mercurial in his moods, quick to anger and quicker to forgive. He's competitive but equally gracious in victory or defeat; he can occasionally be self-absorbed and a bit of a snob, but also kind and generous in equal measure. He's still the best person Nicolò has ever known, along with Andromache and Quỳnh, but he's no idol to be worshipped.

Nicolò will always want to be worthy of him, yes. But he thinks perhaps it's more important to be worthy of _himself_. That's work enough for any man.

"Now?" he echoes, looking up to meet Yusuf's eyes. "Now I think we need to get this camp packed up before Andromache and Quỳnh return, or we're going to learn new meanings of the word _struggle_."

Yusuf barks out a laugh, his whole face lit from within in surprised humor, and Nicolò allows himself to bask in that sunburst. Just for a little while.


	9. how swiftly we choose it, the sacred simplicity of you at my side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: PTSD/grieving, because they may be immortal but they're still human.

In Al-Andalus, Yusuf feels the closest to _home_ he has been since leaving Mahdia. They come to rest for a time in the Almoravid capital of Seville, and for the first time in years, Yusuf is once again surrounded by people who look similar to him, who speak a variant of his native tongue, whose dress and customs spark memories of his youth. It's different in a thousand different ways, of course, but still: the muezzins call the adhan five times each day, and as he once told Nicolò, his faith has always been deeply entwined with a sense of community. He burrows into this one with a will.

He's surprised, at first, that Andromache is willing to settle down for more than a season or so. She just arches a brow and points out that after thousands of years walking the earth, she's certainly familiar with the concept of standing still from time to time.

"What's the longest you've ever stayed in one place?" Yusuf demands.

"We spent close to a century in Ur," Quỳnh says. "Wasn't that one of the places they thought you were a god, my dear?"

"And what did they think _you_ were, then?"

Quỳnh grins wickedly. "Her very devoted priestess."

So perhaps they are unlikely to spend the next century in Seville, or even a full decade. But it's long enough for them to obtain a house just within the city walls with two separate bedrooms and a much nicer courtyard than the one in Constantinople. Andromache quickly secures work with the Almoravid army as an ostler and horse trainer, and Quỳnh demonstrates a frankly shocking aptitude for weaving. "We are women of many talents," she laughs, when both Yusuf and Nicolò gape at her newly acquired loom. "It's just not an occupation that travels well. But as long I don't have to carry it around with me, I enjoy the work. It's soothing."

Nicolò promptly finds his way to the city's hospital, of course, and Yusuf, with his university education and pretty calligraphy, secures work as a scribe and bookkeeper for a local cloth merchant. Between the four of them, they do quite well in Seville, building a different sort of home together. They spar in the courtyard when Andromache gets twitchy, and sometimes just for fun; Yusuf enjoys the sheer physicality of it. In the evenings, Quỳnh and Nicolò trade off kitchen duties—apparently both are able enough cooks, when given the time, space, and ingredients required—and they all sit telling stories together well into the nights, often while Yusuf sketches.

Of course, there are always tensions between Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms to their north, but here in the capital city, they feel relatively removed from any occasional skirmishes. That is, until militia from Toledo manage to raid their way deep into Almoravid territory and succeed in killing the governor of Seville at the city gates.

The battle, such as it is, stretches out for the better part of a day and night. The Toledans don't have sufficient forces to take the city, but they seem content to do as much damage as possible, for as long as they can hold out. Yusuf supposes it's meant as a message of sorts. Mostly, he's just _pissed_ that he's only just found this space of peace in the midst of their immortal lives, and it's already being invaded.

None of the immortals have sworn fealty to the Almoravids, a military dynasty much like any other, but their inclination will always be to protect those who cannot defend themselves. So Andromache rides out in a man's armor to help defend the city gates, while Yusuf and Quỳnh join the archers on the walls. Yusuf is only a middling shot, even after several years of Quỳnh and Nicolò's tutelage, but it suffices for now. Normally, they would expect Nicolò to join them, but he set out early this morning with other medics trained to the battlefield, and might be anywhere in the city by now—or possibly even outside it.

A thin cord of anxiety wraps itself around Yusuf's heart, tugging a little tighter with every hour that passes without knowing what has become of Nicolò. He tells himself it must be much worse for Quỳnh, _knowing_ that Andromache is on the front line without her, and does his best to follow her example by ignoring it.

Before dawn, the fight is over, and the surviving Toledans have fled. Yusuf tries to go out in search of Nicolò, but Quỳnh reasonably points out that Nicolò will likely be doing the same, and the easiest way for them all to find one another is to return home. So they do, where they strip down their outerwear and curl up like puppies together on Quỳnh's bed. They're woken abruptly some hours later by Nicolò, who shouts that the fleeing militia have pillaged and then set fire to the nearest village beyond the city walls. Andromache is already there, trying to help as best she can.

The relief at seeing him safe and sound must immediately be tucked away in favor of managing this new crisis. So they go back out again, riding as hard as they can. The area north of the city is fertile farmland; fortunately, it's been a wet enough spring that the fire hasn't touched the crops. But the village itself is clearly a lost cause. All they can really do is evacuate anyone left, and try to prevent the fire from spreading further.

It's a grim scene. Yusuf can't help but remember the fire that had killed him in Palermo, ending his life as part of the Al-Kaysani family for good. Maybe that's why it cuts him so deeply when they beat back the flames enough to find the potter's wife dead in her home.

He'd not known her name, but she frequently sold her husband's wares in Seville on market days, and she had a warm voice and mischievous smile. She always reminded him of Maryam, a little—something in the round curve of her cheek, the way a few dark gray curls always managed to spring free of her scarves, the shrewd humor in her eyes. When the potter's house burned, they'd both been caught inside unawares and still sleeping; it wasn't the fire that killed them, it was breathing the smoke. The bodies are hardly even singed on their narrow bed.

And in that first, awful instant, Yusuf sees his own sister lying there.

For all the fighting he's done, the men he's killed, the battles he's survived—for all the horrors he witnessed in the fall of Jerusalem—this, somehow, is the sight that breaks him. Maybe it's the unexpectedness of it; they hadn't realized anyone remained inside the house, had only gone within to see if there was anything salvageable from it. Maybe he's grown soft from nearly a year of living peacefully in Seville, his growing confidence in his own invincibility and that of the three people he now cares for most in the world. Maybe it's some long-repressed guilt for having abandoned the family he loved, even though Maryam had given him her blessing, even though he never had much choice in the matter.

Or maybe it's simply that this poor woman looks so very much like Maryam. And Yusuf will likely never know when or how his sister will pass on from this world, but at some point he will be alive and she will not, and neither will his nephew Ibrahim or his niece Sarra or the little great-nephew who shares his name, and all at once it is absolutely inconceivable to him that he should continue walking this earth when his family does not.

He just barely staggers back outside before falling to his knees and retching. It's been many hours since he last had anything to eat or drink, so nothing comes up but bile, but it sears his throat all the same. He doesn't weep, not yet, not here. Somehow he drags himself back up to his feet—no, not on his own, Nicolò is there beside him, hand firm at his elbow, face a mask of concern. But Yusuf stands nonetheless.

And he manages to hold it together while they continue working through the smoldering remnants of the village, house by house. There are one or two other awful surprises like the potter's home. Yusuf hardly even sees them, just keeps moving, lifting fallen beams and pushing open broken doors and passing anything salvageable back out to the other villagers. His hands are black with soot and have been burned and cut and healed so many times over that he scarcely notices anymore. At some point Nicolò is no longer with him; and then he returns with Andromache and Quỳnh at his back, all three sharing the same worried expression. They could be siblings. Yusuf starts to walk on toward the next house, only to find that they've reached the edge of the fields instead.

"Yusuf," Andromache says quietly. "That's enough."

He shakes his head, over and over. If he stops moving, he'll have to _think_ again, and there's a yawning chasm somewhere inside of him waiting to swallow him whole. "No, no, there's still so much—"

"Quỳnh and I can manage it. You've done enough for today. Let Nicolò take you home, all right?"

"I can't—"

"Come, Yusuf." Nicolò's voice now, low and warm, speaking the first dialect of Arabic that Yusuf ever taught him in the desert. "You've helped them so much already. Let me help you now, hmm?"

And somehow, wherever Nicolò leads him, Yusuf will follow.

They retrieve their horses and ride back toward the city. At some point, they stop by the river so that Yusuf can retch again, but at least there's cool water there to wet his face after, and both of them take the opportunity to clean off the worst of the grime from the fires. Yusuf can hear the adhan as they pass through the city gates, but he has no idea which call to prayer it might be. Asr? Maghrib? The sky has been thick with clouds all day, he's not sure of the position of the sun. He does not have it in him to find a mosque.

Once home, Nicolò convinces him to bathe while he prepares a quick meal. Yusuf has no stomach for it, but he can't bear to disappoint Nicolò, so he swallows a few bites anyway. Every time he blinks, he can see the potter's wife in her burnt-down bedroom. He can see Maryam's face. Or maybe Sarra's. He hasn't thought of his niece Sarra in months, maybe years. She named her firstborn after him, and he never even knew if the boy survived to adulthood. What kind of uncle does that make him? What kind of man?

He's dimly aware of sinking to his knees in the middle of the cozy main room of their quiet house, head bowed and palms pressed against his knees as though in prayer, while tears stream freely down his cheeks, soaking into his beard. He hears a low, broken keening noise that cannot possibly be coming from his own throat. He can't seem to quiet it, though.

" _Yusuf_ ," Nicolò sighs, and drops down to kneel beside him. He wraps his arms around Yusuf as though bracing him, holding on tight as Yusuf covers his face with his hands and weeps. "Oh, my love, I am so sorry. Shh, my heart, my Yusuf, it will pass."

He continues to murmur soothing nonsense in Greek, in Arabic, in Ligurian, never loosening his hold as the storm within Yusuf squalls and rages. The cracked and gaping chasm behind his ribcage does not lessen, exactly, but it slowly numbs over, becomes less omnipresent. He can breathe around it again. It leaves him drained, utterly exhausted, and he feels himself sagging into Nicolò's arms.

Nicolò presses his forehead to Yusuf's temple, breathing deeply. Yusuf finds himself matching him breath for breath, the slow and steady pace of it calming him further. "Come, my love," Nicolò finally says, soft and low. "Let's get you to bed, hmm?"

They share a room, have since they first arrived in Seville. No, since long before that. When they're on the road, he and Nicolò set their bedrolls close together. When they stay in an inn, they share a bed. Sometimes with the women as well. It's simpler. Here they have separate rooms, because Andromache and Quỳnh enjoy privacy when they have the opportunity for it, and Yusuf has never minded sharing space with Nicolò. Even in Fustat, when they still hardly even knew each other. Here they each have their own bed, but when Yusuf collapses onto his, he catches hold of Nicolò's wrist and won't let go. Nicolò makes no protest, simply climbs in behind him, and between one breath and the next, Yusuf drops into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

When he finally awakens, sunlight is streaming through their open window. It must be mid-morning, at least; Yusuf slept straight through the Fajr without even hearing the adhan.

Nicolò is curled up on his side facing Yusuf, his arms wrapped around himself, still sleeping soundly. This is already unusual; normally Nicolò is the one to leap into alertness at the slightest sound, while Yusuf is far slower to rise. But then, Yusuf supposes there has been nothing to jolt him awake. All is calm and quiet. And after the past two frantic days, he must have been just as exhausted as Yusuf.

Yusuf studies his companion's face: the pale skin turned honey-gold by sunlight, the strong prow of his nose, the curve of his lips, that dark mole on his jaw. He looks softer in sleep, and strangely young. There's just the faintest furrow in his brow, and Yusuf longs to reach out and smooth it away with his fingertip.

Yesterday's storm of weeping left him depleted, but not in a bad way; he feels rather like an empty vessel waiting to be filled. His heart trembles in his chest with the exquisite agony of anticipation.

Nicolò's eyes flicker rapidly behind closed lids for a moment. Then he exhales, almost a sigh, and blinks awake.

Caught, Yusuf makes no attempt to look away. He thinks he couldn't even if he tried, especially not when a sleepy smile tugs at the corners of Nicolò's mouth.

"Good morning." Nicolò's voice is low and scratchy. His gaze slips lazily across Yusuf's face, then turns serious all at once. "How are you feeling?"

Yusuf closes his eyes for a moment, trying to rein in his thoughts. "Drained," he manages. "A little embarrassed. But better for it. I think I've been holding onto that grief for some time; it needed to be released."

"Good," Nicolò murmurs. "I did not like to see you in so much pain. And you have nothing to be embarrassed about." He reaches out as though to touch Yusuf's face, then hesitates, faint color rising in his cheeks.

Yusuf catches his hand before he can pull away, then carefully, deliberately, places a kiss on his fingertips. It's ridiculous, he thinks, to realize that his own hand is shaking. But so is Nicolò's. So maybe that's all right.

"Yusuf…" Nicolò's eyes are so very wide.

"Last night," Yusuf says quietly, not releasing him. He brushes his thumb back and forth across Nicolò's knuckles. "I was...not aware of everything around me, I admit. But I knew the feel of your arms. Your voice, soothing me. Do you remember what you were saying to me?"

Nicolò's hand flexes in his, returning his clasp. He swallows hard but meets Yusuf's eyes without flinching. Nicolò, Yusuf thinks, has always been the bravest among them. "Yes."

Yusuf lets out a shaky breath. His heart is so, so full. "Good," he murmurs, and tugs Nicolò in closer, their joined hands caught between them. He leans forward just enough that he can feel Nicolò's breath on his own lips.

"Yusuf," Nicolò says, his nose bumping lightly against Yusuf's, "you don't have to—"

"Oh, my dearest love," Yusuf breathes, "I _absolutely_ do." And kisses him.

It's so soft at first, but not at all tentative. Just the warm press of lips, slow and sure. The world around them holds still, so that there is no sound but their own breaths, and the gentle slide of their mouths together. Nicolò's hand slips out of Yusuf's so that he can run his fingers through Yusuf's beard instead. Yusuf mirrors him, cupping Nicolò's jaw so carefully, thumbing the warm, soft skin of his cheek. He tilts his head to improve the angle and deepens the kiss, tasting him properly. Every inch of Yusuf's skin feels like it's humming. He shivers with it, and Nicolò makes a quiet, needy sound in the back of his throat. But neither of them increase their pace, continuing their slow, deliberate kisses, breaking apart only to breathe and then return together.

Yusuf has never felt so _present_ in his entire life. His whole world has condensed to this moment, to his Nicolò, to the way their bodies feel together. He has known since Constantinople that he desired Nicolò, though he thinks his body recognized that many years earlier; how long, then, since he realized that Nicolò had become as essential as the air in his lungs, the blood in his veins? Yusuf cannot only be discovering this now. He cannot have been this willfully stupid for so long.

It's Nicolò who moves them inexorably forward, gently pushing Yusuf onto his back and rolling with him, straddling Yusuf's waist, leaving a trail of wet kisses down his neck and collarbone. Yusuf reaches up beneath the hem of Nicolò's loose shirt to trace the smooth, heated skin of his back and shoulderblades, groaning at how unspeakably wonderful that bare skin feels beneath his palms. His own skin feels hot and tight, barely containing him. He presses sloppy, uncoordinated kisses to any part of Nicolò he can reach, rocking up into him.

Nicolò rolls his hips down to meet Yusuf's, lifting his head for a moment so that he can gasp in breath, his beautiful eyes squeezed shut. Yusuf takes advantage of the lull to start removing the obstacle of Nicolò's shirt, and Nicolò helps at once, tugging it over his head and off. But then he just braces his hands on Yusuf's shoulders and stares down at him for long moments, his gaze searching.

Yusuf's mouth feels very dry, all of a sudden. "Too fast?" he rasps out.

"Fast?" Nicolò tilts his head down closer, his lips barely an inch from Yusuf's. Yusuf keens a little in the back of his throat, straining to meet him, but Nicolò, maddeningly, hovers just out of reach. "Yusuf, this started between us the day you let me accompany you into the desert. I think it began the moment our blades first crossed. There is nothing _fast_ about any of this."

Yusuf laughs, because otherwise he might weep at all the time he's wasted. "You're a _monk_ , what would you know—"

At that, Nicolò growls and surges forward to kiss him again, brutally, _gloriously_. Yusuf holds onto him as tight as he can and gives back as good as he gets, sucking hard on Nicolò's tongue before pulling back to nip at his lips and the underside of his jaw. He is still wearing far too much clothing, but can't bear to release Nicolò for long enough to rectify the situation.

He continues pondering it while kissing and sucking his way down Nicolò's chest, simultaneously doing his best to note which spots elicit the most vocal reactions for further exploration, when the matter is resolved in a most unsatisfactory manner. Their bedroom door scrapes open to reveal Quỳnh, who has already taken a step inside, saying, "Yusuf? Are you—"

That's when she takes in the scene on the bed. Nicolò, to his credit, makes no attempt to scramble off of Yusuf. He simply holds very still and turns his head to look at Quỳnh. Apart from the color creeping into his cheeks, he gives no indication of anything amiss. Yusuf grins at her through his own mild embarrassment. Living on top of one another as the four of them do, they've all seen worse. Yusuf has definitely overheard the women bring each other to raucous climax on more occasions than he cares to count.

But this element of his and Nicolò's relationship is still so very, very new, and he supposes he'd hoped to keep it just to themselves for a bit. He keeps one possessive hand curled around Nicolò's hip, both reassurance and defiance.

"Feeling better then, I take it?" Quỳnh asks, arching her eyebrows.

Yusuf mimics her expression. "Well, I _was_."

"Quỳnh…" Nicolò sighs.

She puts her hands on her hips, giving them both an unimpressed look. "We were _worried_. And the morning's already half gone. Andromache wants to ride out to the other neighboring villages, make sure no one else suffered from the militia's retreat." Her face softens ever so slightly, looking back down at Yusuf. "Are you up for it?"

He glances up to Nicolò, whose gaze has lost some of its searing heat now, shifting into a different sort of intensity. Yusuf knows he worried _him_ , too, yesterday. Very much so. "I am," he says softly, more to Nicolò than Quỳnh.

"Good," Quỳnh says. "I'd recommend you get dressed quickly, or it'll be Andromache who barges in on you next." The door closes again behind her.

The moment thoroughly lost, Nicolò leans down to press their foreheads together, just for a moment. "Are you sure?" he murmurs. "You don't have to come with us."

Yusuf cups his cheek and kisses him firmly. "I am. Yesterday was...bad. But today is already much, much better."

They manage to extricate themselves from the bed—the threat of Andromache's imminent arrival is no idle one—but can't help but continue to trade quick caresses as they hastily wash up and dress for the day. Just the fact that he _can_ kiss Nicolò, can touch him like this, is absolutely astounding. Yusuf feels almost drunk with it.

He makes it as far as the bedroom door before Nicolò stops him, abruptly pushing him back against the door itself and kissing him so thoroughly Yusuf sees stars. "Sorry," Nicolò pants when they break apart. "I just had to—"

Yusuf wraps his arms around Nicolo's waist and kisses him again, then once more. "That is not something you will _ever_ need to apologize for."

Nicolò's eyes go dark and hot, and he tilts his head up for another kiss, which leads to them both clutching at each other and grinding together, hard and fast, until Andromache bangs at the door right behind Yusuf's head and yells for them to get a move on. Yusuf's still pretty sure he could come just like this, but Nicolò regretfully drags himself away, adjusting himself with a wince and taking a few deep, steadying breaths. Yusuf reaches out to help straighten his now-mussed tunic, but Nicolò ducks away from his hands with a rueful smile.

"Don't," he says, voice low and breathless. "Or we'll just start this all over again."

Yusuf has to admit he's probably right.

When they emerge, Andromache and Quỳnh already have the horses saddled and packs ready to go. Quỳnh smirks as Andromache looks assessingly between Yusuf and Nicolò. "About damn time," is all she says, and Yusuf honestly can't tell if she's referring to their relationship or just the lateness of the hour. He doesn't ask.

* * *

They spend the rest of the day in the saddle, taking a winding route north from one settlement to the next. The burned village from yesterday had taken the brunt of it, but armies tend to loot and pillage as they travel, and in some areas the pursuing Almoravid soldiers seem to have caused more damage than the Christian militia. It hurts Yusuf's heart to realize it, though he's not really surprised.

"You know, it's one of the first things Nicolò asked us, when we found him in Baghdad," Quỳnh remarks. She and Yusuf are currently scouting ahead to the next village, while the other two lingered behind in the last, Nicolò putting his medical skills to good use there. "He wanted to know how we decide which side of a battle has the right of it, when we pick a fight."

Yusuf can't help but recall Jerusalem, the massacre there, Nicolò's haunted gaze. "He had good reason to wonder," he murmurs, then shakes off the memory. "What did you tell him?"

"That we protect those who get trampled by both sides of any given war."

"I suppose we try, at least." Yusuf scratches at his beard, looking up at the position of the sun in the sky. "One more village, then make camp for the night?"

Quỳnh hums agreement. After a stretch of quiet, she glances at him sidelong. "I suppose you and Nicolò will be sharing a bedroll?"

He can't help the smile that provokes. Yusuf knows he has a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve; he probably looks ridiculously besotted. Well, so what if he is? "I certainly hope so."

"Yusuf…" Quỳnh hesitates, uncharacteristically. Then, as delicately as her hands move on her loom, she asks, "Are you sure you know what you're doing, with him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look. You had a really rough time of it yesterday. We were all very concerned for you, especially Nicolò. And it's a completely natural reaction for all that pent up tension to...release itself in other ways. There's nothing wrong with that!" she adds hastily. "I cannot begin to count how many times Andromache and I—"

"Yes, I have some idea," he says drily. "Is there a point to this?"

Quỳnh presses her lips together. "I don't doubt that you care for him. And eternity can be very lonely. Having someone to love throughout it lightens the load, and of course I wish that for you both. It's just...I think Nicolò has been waiting for you for a very long time, Yusuf. _Please_ be sure, before you take this any further."

Yusuf stares blindly at the road before them, hands tight on his reins. _My love_ , Nicolò had called him last night, over and over again, holding him as he wept. And this morning: _this started between us the day you let me accompany you into the desert._

"I love him," Yusuf admits quietly. "I am so in love with him that I no longer know anything but that. I think perhaps what happened yesterday simply cracked my heart open, and all the love that I'd kept hidden there, even from myself, just spilled out at last. Quỳnh, I promise you, if I am sure of anything in this immortal life, it is him."

She brings her horse up close alongside his, reaching out to clasp his arm briefly. "All right, then," she says, and smiles.

* * *

They make camp that evening by the narrow river, in the copse of trees that wind along its banks. Yusuf and Nicolò can't quite keep apart as they perform their usual tasks, hips bumping and hands brushing far more than usual, and they sit so close together by the campfire that their elbows knock whenever one of them moves. Andromache rolls her eyes, but seems quietly pleased to see it; Quỳnh's mouth sets into a permanent smirk.

Once they've cleaned up after dinner, Yusuf gets to his feet with a groan. "I'm still stiff from riding all day," he remarks. "I could use a walk to stretch my legs a bit."

Nicolò quickly jumps up as well. "That sounds good."

"I really don't need to know," Andromache sighs, while Quỳnh snickers beside her. "Do what you like. Just try not to stumble across any Toledan soldiers, will you? Or Almoravids, for that matter. I'm going to sleep."

"Sure thing, boss."

They make it as far as the riverbank before Nicolò is on him, pulling him into a fervent kiss. Yusuf returns it without hesitation. They simply stand there for a long time, arms wrapped around one another, mouths moving together. Yusuf wants to sink into him and dissolve there, until they share only one heart between them, one soul. Perhaps they already do.

Eventually, he tugs Nicolò down until they sit side by side on the grassy bank. "We should talk about this."

Nicolò reluctantly drags his gaze up from Yusuf's lips, and Yusuf finds himself entranced all over again by the depth and complexity of his sea-glass eyes. He would need to invent new colors of pigment to paint them.

"Right," Nicolò murmurs. "Talk." He shakes his head as if to clear it, then gives Yusuf a rueful smile. "Sorry, it's just...I'm not sure I quite believe this is finally happening."

Yusuf has to kiss him again, then. For reassurance. "I love you," he says. "I'm not sure if I've actually said that yet. But I do, Nicolò. So very much."

Nicolo closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Yusuf's. "Yusuf, I have loved you since we first crossed the desert together."

The breath catches in Yusuf's throat, and his hands grip convulsively on Nicolò's shirt. "So long?"

"It's all right," Nicolò says soothingly. He strokes a hand across Yusuf's hair, then cups the back of his neck, squeezing gently. "I never would have asked anything of you in return. My heart was yours, that's all." He tilts his head up to press a kiss to Yusuf's brow, then another to his lips. "I never could have believed, then, that you might share it."

"But you believe me now?" Yusuf whispers, desperately.

He can actually _feel_ Nicolò's smile. "Of course."

"Why?"

"Because I know you," he says, as though it's the simplest thing in the world. "You would never lie to me, not about this. So of course I believe you."

Yusuf suddenly, vividly remembers that moment so many years ago when it splintered between them, in Fustat. Nicolò's urgent voice insisting _because I know you. Because we are the same, you and I!_ And how Yusuf had thrown it in his face, rejecting every part of him.

Nicolò had known all along. Had loved him even then, even as Yusuf walked away from him. He loves him even now, has held onto it for more than thirty long years. He's only been waiting for Yusuf to catch up.

Perhaps Nicolò can read some of this in Yusuf's eyes, because he kisses him again, so very gently. "It's all right," he repeats. "It could not have happened any other way, my heart. You needed the space to _choose_ this, not just be stuck with it. And I would not have been able to love you so well, then. It would have been a stunted and grasping sort of love. You deserve far better."

"We would have made it work, I think," Yusuf protests, though really, Nicolò is probably right. He recalls how bitter he'd felt at the beginning, incredulous of their shared fate, terrified of being shackled to this stranger forever. But still: "I would choose you a thousand times over, Nicolò. You must know this. And we've wasted so much time—"

"I don't think any of it was a waste." Nicolò searches his face a moment, then smirks, an expression eerily similar to Quỳnh's. "But we can certainly start making up for it—"

Yusuf tackles him into the grass, wrestling playfully until Nicolò's laughter turns breathless and his own heart hammers in his chest. He pins Nicolò to the soft earth and kisses him, and kisses him, and the stars wheel above them as they will for the next thirty years, and the century after that, the millennium after that, time stretching endlessly out before them and all of it theirs for the taking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm also on [tumblr](Https://kaydeefalls.tumblr.com), if that's your thing.
> 
> Again, the GORGEOUS art by **prose-n-scripts** can be found [here](https://prose-n-scripts.tumblr.com/post/639255898170261504/do-you-think-well-dream-of-each-other-now). Please show her some love!


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